for love and poets

for a sliver of a blink
i listened by the door
for the sound of a dead frog
creeping up the front step
until the poet told me

that is like waiting for love
in the darkness around a whorehouse

my pen whimpered a bit
as i jotted down the note
on a crumpled gas station receipt.

but that's poetry, i told it

cold hard nothing,
like last month's frog carcass
and doggerel from the lips
of some stupid chick
who thinks hers is the most broken
heart in the history of hearts.

the seat creaks under my thick thoughts
and the rest, crease their eyes
into the rotting corpse a smile's harbinger

i play the queen of spades
swig my jack, and laugh.
just another series of bad choices
assonance without the sonic shit
consonance without the vowel movement
cliche without the cards to play

i reason out the rhyme of the game
toss off another happy trick,
finish my jack, grab a napkin
and stomp merrily out the back
where orion stalks me between pine needles

i jot down another note, this time
it's not a broken hearted chick
or a dead frog, it just says,
black ink, blue ink, red ink
once the poet's dead tan the hide
scratch it out
then bury the poem.

leave no evidence.

a dead frog skitters past
gleefully to my right

behind me, a toast to broken hearts
ahead - Billy Collins tells me
i'm shit without an MFA.