The etching stared out, black and grey and dirty, <br />a portrait of the artist as insane, <br />his shirtless torso sagging, thick for thirty, <br />his flesh a canvas of regret and pain. <br /> <br />He held his pen aloft, an ink conductor <br />prepared to swath his tool in southpaw scrawl. <br />He wrote of her, his love, and how he fucked her <br />like some deflated whore or blow-up doll. <br /> <br />His sickness was his cure: a need to write <br />no matter the allusion, muse, or theme; <br />addiction sucked him like a parasite <br />and locked him in a drug-descendant dream. <br /> <br />He died a junkie, slumped against the sink, <br />riddled with needle-marks that bled red ink.<br /><br />David Nelson Bradsher<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/etching/
