the resignation(for me)
06.20.02 - by: Michael Cirelli


the resignation (for me)

chop off my hands on the writers block-
it's the poet's last night.

sell my fingers on ebay
and string them like a pendant

hang 'em from your neck
in remembrance of what my pen did.

i'm checking the out box
with nothing left to say.

all i own is an ok computer rammed with mutterings
and the blueprints for my last day.

put my two cents in a lucky wishing well
and place my alphabet with the wind.

i'm returning all my words to the air
and all my breath to the word.

today nothing will be inspiring,
the sun will be indescribable
the moon won't invoke anything,
let it punctuate the midnight of my death sentence.

let the birds quotation mark my final thoughts
and the trees hold them until they return to naught.

take my pens and drain the blood from them.
donate my pencils to the penitentiary,
they're harmless now.
shred my poems and give them to the pound
to sop up pomeranian puppy poopy, nothing is sacred.
everything is cliché.

i'll admit it
i took it all too seriously
i pandered to no one and got nowhere
what made me bitter
made me better

but now i must lay in a grave
dug by my teeth.

crucify me with your fingernails,
take my ear if you will
and listen to the voices of indifference,
this is the point i've come to:

self abhorred
with loans deferred,
an insular cosmopolitan.
it's all my fault
and this is all i could come up with
from my two windows
in the pent house,
i'm done living with the roaches
feed my body to the lotus-

i have no need to be lugubrious anymore
because i have finally used that word
so contact the g.r.e. people and tell them i'm ready-

ring the tears from my rejection notices
and send them back east,
they can keep their foreign language poems
while i continue to nurse my broken english
to the death!

then cremate what's left.

plug an electric chair into my eye sockets
and extract the lotion from my vocal chords
for i shall be soft spoken no more,
i feel one last scream coming on-

it's probably my most publishable piece of work;
put it in my will and leave it to the deaf.

when it's all said and done
please,
make sure my funeral procession is down the high way.
it's rsvp only, and you must carry your tongue
in your right fist
and wear your farts on your sleeve.

you might see my apparition hitchhiking
with a middle finger
and a cardboard sign that says:
ass or bust?

i broke down on the road less traveled
and it made no difference at all

so pat me on the butt
and put me in touch with st. peter.

i'm anticipating his question will be something like,
"who's yer daddy?"
and i'll say, "i don't know"
and he'll say, "i respect your honesty kid, you're
in."

so let's do it. i think it's my time.
i can finally study with whitman.

chop off my hands on the writer's block-
it's the poet's last night.

sell my fingers on ebay
and string them like a pendant

hang 'em from your neck
in remembrance of what my pen did.

i'm checking the out box
with nothing left.