I was a jackanapes

in Sevastopol when sloth consumed me.
Now I’m fagged on a stack
of lighted pyre, the funeral
in progress. I was the son of violence,
and as begets one so highly skilled:
a gun-licker & barrel-blower
who shot off his own nose.
My vengeance paid back

in towers of flame.
A jackanapes no

mo’.

“One must have a mind of winter

The greatest lines in poetry are infinitely quotable while having no definite meaning. What is a mind of winter, and why must one have one? It doesn’t matter.”

— Elisa Gabbert / “What Poetry Is”