To Baudelaire: October 1996

Mama’s boy! Compassionate,

ridiculous, dandified cunt!

Right minded, wrongheaded,

unwed slave and parasite!

No poets go to Hell— God

be with you, vulgar and

adorable prick! May your

tarted up, nose-pick ice-pick tales

grow into a grin in the ether!

You immortal artist you—

we remember, who have

been in New Jersey at midnight,

no girls, nothing to do,

sitting through thunders, hurricanes,

what it is to be bored, “to ennui”—

to sling a black coat over our

shoulders, stroll streets in paroxysms,

then into ecstasy, devilish slumbers,

out again into the ocean— we remember thee.