Mumbling Prufrock

Mumbling Prufrock (A Renaissance Man Looks at Forty)

Thin hair coiffed
slick
with the grease
of easy seasons,
soles of your
worn leather
loafers damp with
wine,
you pander to teens
scribbling trash
on napkins,
lazing days away
on the government tit,
wreathed in several empty snifters
of red
bought by tourists
too complacent to know
bullshit from
talent.

Havana or Paris
you've got the look and the
lingo,
flaneur grifter,
Poet Laureate
of the local
Food Bank,
sifting through ash cans
for dimes
and stubbed fags,
no one wants your ear
or your time,
my dear.

A torrent of condescension
flows from your
toilet,
Duchamp in a
dumpster,
stacks of Bacon on Bacon,
and You on Yourself,
notes in the dog-eared margins
of Bovary,
a worthless Egyptology
lesson over
canned Spam,
the texture of crumbs
and filthy nails
from rolled
Bugler.

Every once in awhile
some young thing
becomes
enamored
with your soap box,
your Django,
and your line after line.
And every once in awhile
you'll stick it in her
and feel empty
because your guts aren't
worth a buck
ninety-nine.

And every once in awhile
you'll face your reflection,
graceless and craven,
howling Ginsberg
at your might have beens..
And every once in awhile
you'll weigh death in
your scales
mumbling Prufrock
through wastelands
of Blue Ribbon tins.

Draining your syph
into a gas station shitter
playing
Stratford-on-Avon
to truckers
with a Bic,
you'll grasp the cruel
irony of
friendlessness
and the desolation
fame.
But you'll never be famous
dear,
because the Devil
don't smile
on those without
discipline,
and angels don't drink
from the
Thames.