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"Complaint of the Muse: Take This Job and Shove It"

By Robert ThomasUpdated Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2005, at 3:05 PM ET

Click here to listen to Robert Thomas read this poem.

You watched as I rode my bike for a butter stick,
watched from the choir as I returned to my pew
from the communion rail, counting the red tiles.
When I ran out of gas next to a garlic farm
and went down a furrow to the dark garage,
when I danced at my brother's wedding
stomping my boots without wasting one drop
of champagne, you were there. You loomed,
likening me to a diamond can opener
or a one-woman bevy of quail, but always
likening me. I bled and to you I was a page-turner,
wept and for you the mokihara bloomed red
on Mt. Waialeale. You don't even know
that Johnny PayCheck died last month,
whose obituary said he shot a man in an Ohio
watering hole, capitalized the "C" in his name
a few years later, and wrote three great songs,
one of which is remembered. What about your
obit? That you fed lambs with an eye-dropper?
Milked the Great Bear? I've had it up to here
with your marching band: I'm taking off
my spandex epaulettes. The next time I toss
my flaming baton, I'll be in another state
when it comes down. On your honeymoon
I'll be the aa, the glorious, trillion-spined
black lava slicing through your flip-flops.

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Robert Thomas' Door to Door was chosen by Yusef Komunyakaa as winner of the Poets Out Loud Prize in 2002, and his new book, Dragging the Lake, will be out later this year.

Click here to visit Robert Pinsky's Favorite Poem Project site.

Please note: Because Slate's backlog of accepted poems is substantial, poetry
editor Robert Pinsky will not be reading new submissions until December 2005.

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