The Early and Horrible

Rossini was challenged

to prove his youthful talent

Six sonatas

he later called horrible

Jacqueline Rochester

a southwestern painter

had a clearance sale

in a previous

north central community

where true success

was impossible

said a painting

of a Mexican Indian woman

should be destroyed

but needed the forty dollars

anyway

Any halfway decent poet

ought to destroy everything

that was written before

what a reader might

be reading now

Everything but the now

is disgusting

droolish horse apples

stretched in a line

on a rainy afternoon

without so much

as a poncho

to shield the artist

from the road splatter

of the fawners

So erase this after reading

because the words

feelings and images

no longer exist

in a writer's mind

unless of course

it is the last writing

that stews itself

for a rewrite

in a coffin

or as the flames

lick at the spinning brain

stirring a scream 
to stop

as it seeks a better word

to replace the trite

just read

by those

not yet dead

who will acclaim

the last lines

humorous

visionary

and mystical

gODD dammit

Barry G. Wick