When cops pulled me over they asked
for a list of poets who loved my work.
I couldn't remember any at the time,
with handcuffs and jail time disturbing
my thinking, and all my chapbooks
were at home, their writers' blurbs
spotlighted below my photograph,
fairy godmothers who transformed
my pitiful pumpkins into poetry.
They told me to step out of the car,
but I couldn't stop, even for death.
I promised the bookstore I'd read
and couldn't disappoint the five fans
who roamed the aisles in raincoats
waiting to flash my every word.
The police shot at my bald tires,
so thin bullets passed through them,
and exploded the back window into
shards, like my psyche when tasks
keep me from writing at work.
News cameras scrolled my words
on their screens, Amazon immediately
showed a rise in my books' sales,
from nothing to first on the list.
People held free verse signs, rooting
for me to escape formal prisons.
The poet laureate accused authorities
of discriminating against me,
for liking lines over sitcom dialogue
and refusing to speak like
the movies.
I knew I could continue speeding,
through the city, past Barnes and
Noble, over the canyon in my future,
where the gap between things as
they are meets the one that ends me.
I'll be arrested by flashing lights
on my tombstone, the selected
works of my corpse ignored for
showy criminals of the present,
who remember me for a tragic life
while they steal everything
I owned.