NO MORE MORNINGS

by D.B. COX

with art by F.N. WRIGHT


"another morning when he must do it again -- there is always another morning ..."

--Ernest Hemingway



after you walked away
from all of those
car wrecks &
plane crashes,
i was convinced
you were
indestructible,
larger than life --

battles in italy,
safaris in africa,
fistfights in key west –
although, chances are,

dorothy parker
could’ve kicked
the shit out of
wallace stevens

but when your
old powers,
& old friends
started to fade,

& you began to
measure each
evening by the
whiskey left

in the bottle,
& who wasn’t there --
the unrelenting depression
became overwhelming …

in a discarded
draft of your
nobel prize
acceptance speech,

you wrote, “there
is no lonelier man
than the writer,
when he is writing;

if he has written well,
everything in him
has gone into the
writing, & he faces

another morning when
he must do it again --
there is always
another morning …”

one day in july, 1961,
you put a 12 gauge
shotgun to your
head; & since

you never did
anything half-ass,
touched off
both barrels --

so you can rest
now "papa,"
ignore that bell
for the next round --

the goddam hammer
of the morning alarm,
now irrelevant …


D.B. COX



Bottled Message No. 2
"No More Mornings" by D.B. Cox with Hemingway art by F.N. Wright. Launched: 2.20.05 by Mystery Island. 2005 © Copyright Mystery Island Publications. All rights reserved.
Art/words remain the property of the the artists.



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