the has-been

when he was younger &
the spice of the moment
the cameras did capture him a million times over
his music made the charts
his paintings sold for way more than they could ever have been worth &
the world care about what he had to say
for all but a brief moment---he shocked & some might say he
rocked, and that’s the way the cookie
crumbles---
when he was big, he had the kitties coming up to suckle
he never spent a night alone
he snorted blow off their chests like it was going out of style,
hitching up the reindeer & off to the market
from the stage to the rave & from the rave to the stage
the whole while dizzy from sexual exhaustion &
a body full of chemicals
foreign to the body but needed for the fill &
then suddenly,
no one gave a shit about him anymore.

the magazines removed his face
the news reporters walked by him now
on the way to a younger, more shocking thing &
the internet barely whispered
because what he had been no longer buzzed
like the buzzing bee he had once seemed to be,
and now, the kitties stopped suckling,
pulling away from that bowl of milk
like it had turned overnight &
he found himself sleeping more & more nights with an
empty bed,
while the chemical level in his bloodstream
rose as fast as his has-been status.

now the fallen wreckage of a once talented artist
roams round hollywood or whatever plastic place he can find young aspiring ladies who want nothing to do with him any longer,
on his knees & begging please
for one more roll in the hay
one more night to bring all his senses to a hilt
reminding him of when he was the shit
when he had something to say that people wanted to hear,
or at least pretended to,
long enough so that he could get some decent drugs &
a few supermodels---
now,
the old geezer watches with teary eyes
the younger versions of him
getting what he still wants
but he can no longer have,
because the rules apply to all who have lived the
life.