Bad Boy

He was finished with the intellectual life.
What did it get him?
The hell he was a writer! He should stick
to playing his piece
of oiled, be-reeded timbre
divided in half to sleep in its case,
and maybe he could do the same
should conditions demand.
Or he could become a grifter, gamesman
with a dollar sign between his eyes.
Or he could keep writing, but stories only.
Poems were worthless, no money
from them because they were too hard
to read, if, that is, they were poems at all,
which he suspected his were not.
No, he would leave the grift to others.
He would go back to playing once
he had decided what he had to do.
Until then, he’d keep getting the water hot
as he could stand it 
in his skin-tight rubber gloves
turning dirty dishes into clean
like a heart blotched with sin
being washed with Christ’s blood,
or so the books said that everybody read
or said they did.
He was his own man.
Let the bevy of beasts roaming the streets
be restless and congregate,
he would walk where he wanted, 
he would unriddle what he needed
to do.  

(14 December 2012)

copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander