YES YES

I never tap my pen
against my forehead
searching for inspiration
like that poet did in
NOTHING SACRED
trying to capture
the perfect image
that might immortalize
Hazel Flagg, beautiful,
young, sweet, and dying
of radium poisoning
although she really wasn’t,
she just wanted a trip to New York–

And when her doctor, drunken
but sweet, old, lively
misdiagnosed her as a victim
of radium poisoning she asked
“Why bother?” to tell anybody
“that I don’t have radium poisoning?”

Instead, she saw it as an opportunity
golden, like a gold nugget in a sunset
that is very golden, to visit

New York City, which she longed
to do, irrespective of a death, which
was not to be

And she would arrive to great fanfare
in New York City, and the fete
would begin and the people would cheer
heartily and the poets would tap their heads
mercilessly–oh inspiration! Whither, etc...

I think of this when I, too, write, or when
Carole Lombard dies, not a false death at all
not radium poisoning at all, no
unlike Hazel Flagg, played by Carole Lombard,
instead, still, and on a mountain top, in the snow,
her husband’s hands trying to find her, powder in
the air, much more inspired than a poet you might
find here or in the snow of

Radium poisoning–no. Death–not really.
But eventually, yes. Yes.

all artwork, including handsome monsters but not crinkly devilish types,
® mr. crispy flotilla, 2008