Brautigan Week: i lay me down by D.B. Cox

28 January 2007

for Brautigan

tiny voice of the counter-culture
found-dead as hell
rotting on the floor
beside a bottle
& a .44
loser in a one-man gunfight
against a deadly hand-
caught unprepared
during those minutes
of the day & night
when the nasty
black fingers started to pull
at his dirty shirt tail-
abandoned & ignored
by the hip crowd
who once danced
like the children of hamlin
to his clever songs-
he finally fell
for the sexy dark eyes
of sister suicide-
now
the forever hungry
cannibals circle naked
around his body
tearing away chunks
of another deserted son
no longer watched over
by the fickle
machine of mercy

(c) D.B. Cox 2007

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DB Cox is a blues musician/writer from South Carolina. His writing has appeared in Underground Voices, Thunder Sandwich, Dublin Quarterly, Aesthetica, Bonfire, Gator Springs Gazette, Heat City Review, Snow Monkey, Southern Hum, Southern Gothic and others. He has had four books of poetry published: Passing For Blue [Rank Stranger Press], Lowdown and Ordinary Sorrows [Pudding House Publications] and Empty Frames [Main Street Rag].