John Grochalski

picasso drove two women to madness

two others killed themselves over him

and ernie hemingway pushed through four wives
and two fucked up sons
before he finally took a bullet to his head over breakfast

on video i’ve watched bukowski kick his wife off a couch

over and over and over again
in a fit of drunken jealous rage
while norman mailer tried to kill his wife

hell, caravaggio and ben jonson actually did kill people

villon and genet were thieves
and rimbaud ended up nothing but a smuggler

nabokov wrote lolita and lord byron fucked his half-sister

of course flaubert paid to fuck little boys

dickens, the immortal Charles dickens

for all of his philanthropic work

chuck had a taste for the whores
just like vincent van gogh

and those are just the men, ladies and gentlemen

let’s not even get started about what virginia woolf

put leonard through before
before she took a pocketful of rocks to the river

the point is for all of their blemishes, heinous words

or despicable acts
i wouldn’t give one of them back to this slush pile life

i’d rather their art over their good conscience
and citizenship any day

because some of them have given me more light and life

than my family or the closest of friends

so to you people boycotting this artist and that

over their personal views

orson scott card or whoever you trolls have lined up next

someone who’s views aren’t yours

or aren’t the fashion of the day

do me a favor and sit down and try to sweat out

thirty novels in as many years

or a handful of operas
a symphony or another wasteland

hell, try to write out your grocery lists

do something other than pounding out your inane
uneducated opinions behind the safe mercy of internet anonymity

your dull bullshit in 140 characters or less

and then we’ll talk
about who’s boycotting who

you motherfuckers.