For Hank

I've gotten laid and
made friends and enemies alike
all just by speaking your name
and I wonder what you'd think
about the way things are today
The internet and open perversion
and the thugs that walk the streets of
my old neighborhood
with their pants hanging off of their asses
and their hands gripping their cocks
The worst part is, really, it's all the same
as you left it
There will always be the corporate dicks on top
playing on the strings of the people who fall for it
dancing around like poorly made marionettes
And those of us who notice the strings
and see through the
bullshit are looking on from the outside
through windows we probably got paid to clean
For way less than it was worth
and the so-called artists are
trust-fund kids who've never had
to beg, borrow or steal
and whose guts hang over their jeans
because they've never gone a day starving
or eating nothing but sauteed onions and air sandwiches.
They buy expensive frames and hang up Klimt
only knowing who he is because a
girl they fucked in college had The Kiss
in poster form, hanging on the
white brick walls of her dorm room.
And their daddies buy them fancy cameras
and guitar amps and they show it off like they've
god damn earned it
and have the audacity to criticize
anyone who didn't grow up like them
I'm so very glad I'm not like them.
I'm not a praying woman, but maybe I should start
praying that I won't come back as one of 'em
& that I'll come back as an
un-neutered male cat instead.