The Last Thing I Wrote

I have this nightmare that if I disband the Council, they’ll be secretly relieved, and then continue to meet--without me--at Pete Gleeson’s place, who has a pool. (A swimming pool trumps many things, maybe all things, especially in this brimstony climate.) Got paid eighteen dollars by poetry magazine “Foxmoaxa” out of Buffalo, NY for a poem I wrote about Cherl leaving. Cashed check at the pizzeria where I know the guy. Free money; I was going to write the poem anyway, and Cherl was gone no matter what.

Cherl is Gone; Old Poet Has Blog

Welcome to the first blog post from a man who's been recently described in Poetry Magazine as a "grizzled, frayed-hair genius." I don't know what my hair has to do with anything. All I know is that Cherl is gone, Cherl is gone, it’s like a song except it’s not a song it’s my life. I’m not easy to deal with or live with or be around? I know this for sure now, it's been proven. She packed her Miata and is GONE.

Took what she thought was hers while I was in Feltonburg at the desert’s biggest antiques fair. True story. Was thinking of buying elephant painting. Retrospect, can’t believe I didn’t. Retrospect, can’t believe a lot of things. She left behind Lorenzo (her name for him not mine) which is just as well since the cat and I get along. (I begged Cherl to stay and work things out. Not trying to be some kind of hard-ass or hard-shell about this. For the record, I begged. Shameless: even if she’d stayed she would have remembered my begging and tears, never been able to forget it or respect me anyway. Self-defeating display of naked emotion, of the repulsive, non-requited, male stripe.) And Cherl was good for the poetry, too. She was, as we all know. Those who follow my stuff may (will) notice a severe, sudden and generally sickening slacking-off in terms of quality poems. Alert the biographer, if there is one. Reason for the watery, neutered, bitter verse circa summer ’08: Cherl is gone.