He was the greatest poet of his generation and now just look at him, just a burned up piece of meat. Who let him drive in the first place? His wife? She must have wanted him dead. Just look at him folks—all those great miserable nonce sonnets and bleeding villanelles and even leakier sestinas, and now he’s not even a body, really. Just something they’ll throw in the oven; we’ll cast his ashes to the sky.
Did anyone bring something to carry him in? Perhaps we should just throw him on the side of the interstate? He always told me he didn’t believe in his body anyway. He would say sometimes, My body is a curse and I can’t wait until I don’t have it anymore. Well, perhaps we shouldn’t respect his body either, should we?
Oh, yes, just right over there, ah, heave-ho! heave-ho! That’s it; throw him way out there in the weeds where he won’t draw too much attention. The buzzards and stray dogs will take care of him. Now, I’m glad we got this body business out of the way, hey, Fred! You better step back a ways before you end up like him and get nailed by one of those ten ton trucks coming down from the factory. All right, what about his un-published work? What are we going to do with all those un-published poems? I guess we’ll have to go back into town and get a couple of wheel barrels to cart ‘em all a way. Who on earth’s going to publish all those un-read poems? Perhaps we can subsidy publish? Fine. Should we pass the hat around? Those vanity publishers can get really expensive. At the very least we can have Kinko’s do the job. No, no, we can’t just staple the collection together ourselves! For Christ sake, we’ve got to show some respect. So, thermal bound at Kinko’s it is.
All right everyone, let’s get off this fucking interstate before some one really does get hit and go over to my apartment and drink some beer and wine and whisky and not let his memory die in our minds too goddamn soon—
After all, he was the greatest poet of our generation.
