YOU HAVE NO IDEA

Until, at last, I brim
with the bleary-eyed hours
best spent in bed,
darkly thrust
beneath thick Persian covers
into that absurd world of revisions:
where editors hack endlessly
ruthless -
desperate to recover that drivel
which will sell a million copies.

T’is a bittersweet epitaph
“I have forgot much, Cynara!
Gone with the wind…”
But not this…
my authorship blows gust-less
- gutless and distilled.
The hemorrhage of red ink
for each carefully constructed paragraph
lapses under the weight of a smile
and my check.

Sold out for the BMW
and that barren parcel -
mortgaged heaven,
rife with sea salt
in the Hamptons.
I wonder if…
enough personal integrity left…
for a hotdog?