Blue Monday

                                        apologies to Fats Domino & Cassandra Wilson

Nobody cares, they have troubles their own,
Nobody cares, you never gave them a dime,

The institution of poetry is like prostitution
as a profession, you should have a union card

and serve an apprenticeship, be a journeyman
or woman before settling down to do poetics

and charge the highest prices you can get
on the market, the art never having paid well

for any but the venerable, rare, quickly aging
who are dying daily from such scarcity of love

Somebody has a jones for the deep voice in folds
over Cassandra’s body moving under her blues

Somebody looks around can see upside down
and overdose trying to turn it all right side up

Nobody cares most of the time but sometimes
they start caring and never stop and go mad

Nobody knows about the secrets of the heart,
it’s hard to sit through a sermon before you eat

just to qualify to be a master of the next level,
singing until waiting for the music to begin

(3 January 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander