I Would Roll Out My Heart

You want to imagine the man can’t take care of himself

because putting yourself in his place is un-faceable.

With no show of ego or anything me-me-me else,

he is bent on becoming so famous he’ll be irreplaceable.

He’s living on water and slices of one-dollar pizza

and sleeps on the floor of a friend who’s no longer a friend.

Like a tzar’s star Muscovian courtesan, or his czaritza

who won’t, though abandoned as widows, emend

their belief they’ll remain the same glamorous beacons

of royalist beauty they’d been, he thinks of his duty this way:

convey your allure and ensure that its hold never weakens.

He will not betray what he’s meant to become: every day

rolls him closer to triumph. I would roll out my heart

as a sleeping bag, keeping him there every night if I could.

But he won't revoke his decision to turn into art –

won’t stop till he’s gone, like art, beyond bad, beyond good.

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