dead, with drugs and a hooker

at the tragic moment, i seemed to be falling
on the rocks of risk, poverty, petulance,
i was an absolute motherfucker with an attitude

my image of myself had become tarnished,
unreliable, untrustworthy, uninspiring,
a label slapped on a big box of collective anxiety

not exactly a candidate for
Time magazine’s: Person of the Year

more like i, without any help at all,
independently regurgitated a zeitgeist,
it is an all to familiar and powerful picture,
but it is not especially an original visual image

eyes unfocused, sly and a bit beyond
the view, head tilted a bit to the side,
an un-reassuring but amusing smile on my face,
the police said i was found in my hotel room
“dead, with drugs and a hooker”
presumably the hooker was dead too

For my dead friend Ed
??/??/1967 – 01/21/2009