For Tony, Marcel, and the rest of the gang

Another greedy chancer
swears he’s not the same.
Sartorially challenged,
politically tame,

all mouth and mission statement,
all circumstance and luck
he makes you think of oldsters
still trying hard to fuck

but sadly out of K-Y
and sadly way off course,
beyond the Will to Power
or even use of force

to satisfy a tickle
with a furtive scratch
without becoming flaccid
or wondering what they’ll catch.

Still waiting for a Savior—
or is it daily bread,
or maybe some aspiring
mouth to give him head?—

he fails to note his zipper
is firmly still in place—
a sin that never happened,
a voided fall from grace.

* * *

Original appearance in The Rotary Dial.