Per Ardua ad Astra

Now that it’s out
that I’m the half-
past moron hum-
ming to the chip-
munk’s half-eaten
skull beneath the
shutters in the the
nursing home where
the fortune-teller re-
veals with pink crayon
my soul’s foreclosure,
I wonder if you con-
centrate hard & long
enough that you might
hear the early C-sharp
that is the absent voice
of all my failures as they
blink and stutter, stuck
to flypaper, and so in order
to feel this bucket of tar-
feathers as it dumps over
my head while I drink
in this little burning spirit.
Then against the funeral
march, which Beethoven
inscribed to Napoleon.
At-least I’ll have a clear path
to the ocean.