no more mornings

 

--- "another morning when he must do it again -- there is always another morning"... Ernest Hemingway

 

after you walked away

from all of those

car wrecks &

plane crashes,

 

i was convinced

you were

indestructible,

larger than life --

 

battles in italy,

safaris in africa,

fistfights in key west –

although, chances are,

 

dorothy parker

could’ve kicked

the shit out of

wallace stevens

 

but when your

old powers,

& old friends

started to fade,

 

& you began to

measure each

evening by the

whiskey left

 

in the bottle,

& who wasn’t there --

the unrelenting depression

became overwhelming…

 

in a discarded

draft of your

nobel prize

acceptance speech,

 

you wrote, “there

is no lonelier man

than the writer,

when he is writing;

 

if he has written well,

everything in him

has gone into the

writing, & he faces

 

another morning when

he must do it again --

there is always

another morning…”

 

one day in july, 1961,

you put a 12 gauge

shotgun to your

head; & since

 

you never did

anything half-ass,

touched off

both barrels --

 

so rest now

"papa",

ignore the bell

for the next round --

 

the goddamn hammer

of the morning alarm,

now irrelevant…