Last Bender

The Girl in the White T Shirt

Jack Spicer drank himself to death

Olson drank himself to death, Lowell and Bishop,

Berryman and Thomas drank themselves to death

It was fashionable to drink and poetry

Was not fashionable and so they drank

To be famous and because the pain of alienation

Was too great they drank but now

It is fashionable to be a poet

And it is not fashionable to drink yourself to death

A poet who drinks too much would be told today

To check himself into a clinic or go to AA

Poets pine for other pines in the forest

As much as we pine for the girl

In the white T shirt fixing her hair