nights when the Jim Beam bottle is almost empty
and the campfire’s down to nothing but glowing coals,
best known around town as the poetry-slinging
half blues Harpoonist and/or the Axe Murderer of hearts,
mine included in the list of victims.
I'm wanted by Puppy Jones,
and a married woman down the road,
with harm or hiss-making love,
this is the summit of the stove
which burns near the bright river of life.
coming in the shimmering ballad
of sinners, I pick flowers from a chain link fence,
hence the knuckle blood and the wrong reputation,
because I am not those things or hers:
I am a lazy literature casualty.
And, one supposes, proof that,
no matter how much murder,
vengeance, and other unpleasantness
happen to be in this world,
sometimes good gets the last word.