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I can feel the thick yellow fat
of applause building up in my arteries,
friends, yet I go on, a fool for adoration.
Do I care that when it sloughs off it is
likely to go straight to the brain?
I am already showing the first signs
of poetic aphasia, the words coming hard,
the synapses of metaphor no longer connecting.
But look at me, down on my knees next
to the podium, lapping the last drops,
then rolling in the stain like a dog,
getting the smell in my good tweed sport coat,
the grease on my suede elbow patches,
and for what?
Well, for the women I walk past the next
morning, the ones in the terminal,
wheeling their luggage,
looking so beautifully earnest.
All for the hope
that they will suddenly dilate their nostrils,
squeeze the hard carry-on handles,
and rise to the ripening odor of praise
with which I have basted myself,
stinking to heaven.