—First Take—

                    Blind, ambitious—I am vicious—
the misunderstood-but-championed darling
of the bi-curious/vicarious set,
                    never wishing-I’d-never-said-
                    that, aware of my talent and
so uninhibited, without having to
answer to editor or corporation,
                    my soul’s consciousness flows without
                    comparison, so here it is,
exchanging hubris for impenetrable
self-assurance, translating defiant self-
                    reliance and -knowledge into
                    inimitable confidence,
an unfiltered poem in one go, written
as it has been intended to be read (and
                    as life is meant to be lived): in
                    one sitting, no regrets, remorse,
redaction, or revision—these words saying…

                                                            —No Fucks Given—

                                                            How very often do
                                        I return to my cautery barn, where, moulding
                                                            myself, I burn off what
                                        residue remains from lust’s rusting edge, or from
                                        whatever recent ceremony honouring
                                        the cult of my personality I have been

                    invited to perform—those unsightly red stains—
                    scalding from my flesh with unrepentant freshness
                    that stale stench public hands and breath shower me in,
                                        fingering beneath such
                                        filth the pliable clay
                                        which holds together tight
                                        memories of having
                    willed my Self into existence, retreating there
                                        from their crowded masses,
                                        as I count among my
                    many blessings that simulacrum of purity

                                                            that aids me in my worst,
                                        perverse purchase of some more immortality,
                                                            that brain-money I drain,
                                        that mint I get by my work, not from giving good
                                        head, but from my sore head giving good words to hordes
                                        sentenced to service my allure, this perverse verse
                                        for which strangers thirst, never knowing it is them
                                        I skewer, though I aim not to hurt, my pen and
                                                            my tongue foregoing the
                                        gutter for the sewer, my mind a fertile field
                                                            where bursts ideas blooming

                    into a beautiful net-worth my readers pipe
                                        in as I flood them with
                                        ideals it will take their
                    mediocre world centuries to consider
                                        before comprehending
                                        their perfect form, this is
                                        what I call making one’s
                                        own future, the self-made
                    man no mere entrepreneur, but a well-lived and
                    self-directed life’s ultimate adventurer,
                    turning personal torture to fortune, until

                                        the inquisition catches up with me, I will
                                        endure, my perseverance a performance I
                                        spent the obscurity of my youth rehearsing,
                                                            a scorned phoenix starting
                                        fires just to be reborn, crackling like crystal from
                                                            their bright lights and poison.