Friday 21 December 2012

Chores


CHORES


Bitches!  Bastards!  Everything to them
is the lawn cut and the bursting dog walked,
and I without money for a lifestyle

they give me the pay equivalent of an hour
of a workman’s salary
and I, squandering and literary,

prone to pursue deprecating luxury
beg off to the dopefiends and millionaires
nervepinched beside me.

A genuine genius in the house
suffering parental gruelling generosity
O they treat me like their child to be proud

But I am turbaned in the shroud
they leave the unsound and poverty-dead in
with, to offset the pallor, the penniless grin:

the platinum fixture of the cloud.
The rest of my life will be spent
siphoning off my benefactors

and benefactresses’ graces.
The precocious and talented are not meant
ever, under God, to earn a cent.


St-Lambert, circa 1982.

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