Midnight Move
by klipschutz
288 months back rent,
no maintenance,
lousy location,
tra-la-la my muse skipped town.
Said keep the change don't spend
the deposit all in one place,
then blew.
A small truckload of sure-fire ideas --
gone without a whisper by sun-up.
Left behind, an eyesore farrago:
abandoned poems and titles for novels
and the last lines from my immortal unwritten plays,
all up on blocks in the lawn
to the disgust of the hard-working neighbors.
O, the odd-job epigrams that carpet
rotting floorboards
and never brought home the bacon;
the dime-a-dozen mile-a-minute
cliches of brilliance, get-rich-quick
bumperstickers, board games, theme parks,
for chrisesakes the new national anthem
that just needs a little polishing!
Even the twin-engined boom-boom room
that tried to pump heat through the joint
was slapped together by the lowest bidder,
with unskilled labor and hemoglobin helper.
My dreams! My schemes! The bitch!
Now I'll have to go into business
or learn computers.
Okay, the place was a dump.
I thought she liked it that way.