Lying For Others

You were the last

of the rock star poets

taking your words on tour

filling auditoriums

your work altering lives

You wrote as an athlete

sprinting towards perfection

hitting each verse like a

running back breaking through

the defensive line of mediocrity

Soon you couldn’t be yourself

only a version your audience wanted

for if they desired a hunter,

a cowboy, a sheriff

you imagined it wholly as new memory

A stetson for a crown

a guitar in one hand

bow in the other

a literary version of celebrity

perpetually drunk on your own words

Flawed in your pursuit of

women and drink

spilling your fame on your

family, drowning in a

Cahulawasee of beer

In death they accused you

of lying for your ego

of being larger than the

life that you brought us

of tainting your legacy

But in putting your weight

under the microscope

they look too closely

without seeing the truth

that the poet must lie

For if you did not hunt

you took what animals

you never killed

and immortalized them

on the page

If you did not fly

you made us feel the

finality of the pilot

dropping bombs or

the woman falling in air

Having once been celebrated

they would tear you down

saying you were half of what

you claimed and therefore

a lie entirely forged

As if they ever truly believed

you gathered moon rocks

coupled with sheep

failed a drowning child

or went wholly blind

Their criticism and judgment

all but waning over the years

even as your power endures

with what you left us

in the words written