Dear young poets, you should know
I’ll sleep with the best ones.
Pulitzer pussy, Guggenheim gooch,
Hugo anything — I’m good with
Booker bastards in bed. PEN is
dependent on tradition & individual
talent, your remarkable ability
to live & die both on the page
and in the air — face down. God,
they know devotion so well.
Contain multitudes and mommy issues.
They can abandon one thing
for the next muse. Those stars
are like dead. Did you know that? 
Keep counting them, baby. If they are
clouded, count all the holes in me!
Promise to fill them. Breed me, then
tell it slant — tell it from the side
and from the back. Tell me
in a Late Style of Fire. The same
sad story of seeing the best minds
destroyed by madness, coke, blowjobs
from exes who never attended readings.
What did they know? What did you know?
Learn that my mouth is a lonely office.
Learn that I can do it exceptionally well.
I guess you could say I’ve a call to keep
sleeping with the best ones. Lock up
my scripts — prescribed & printed
because the best know how to steal.
Honey, these poets know devotion, the hours
you must endure to kill your darlings.
And believe me, I love what I love.
I love all my little deaths. I give into it
every time. I let you come, let you tame
the soft animal of my body. Let you
tear off my red dress and take me
back to May 1937 if you want to. (do it!)
And when you hug me like a hammock,
I’ll know I have wasted my life.