drove
many routes
to find the gold.

Singing on street corners,
rhyming for dimes
and quarters,
Searching sensations
to find the map,
only left him further
from his goal.

Showered shaved
shot up hope
in a golden syringe,
filled his tank
and headed out
towards those
blue mesa hills.

He, of course, could
not find the route,
confusion
became
his only best friend.

He
spins and spins
whirling dervish
disoriented,
there was no gold in dizziness
when he spotted it
he
spun
right past it
gone in a direction unknown.

The driver drives
many routes tonight,
spots many islands of neon,
he finds silver in her arms,
copper in the dice,
brass in the door handles,
diamonds in the rough,
he finds dirt for his grave.

There was no other gold
along the way
there was only the gold
of living
and that
had already been delivered.

I would rather write one good poem
and have it lost
to you and you,
among the waterfall crushing
of trite and rushing verbal droppings
and the infrequent masterpieces

years from now
mediocre and facing  myself,
mirror-wincing,
at a dyed and dying
vanity,
years from now

admission: confession:
my goal was
glory and fame,
to be celebrated,
recalled and retained,
if only
by myself,
with smidgened satisfaction

my Cain mark,
is not a celebration
of a brother's birthright
usurped,
Frailty
thy name
literary adulation

like so, too many
other failures recorded
lost to lol but me,
but one,
perhaps
this one(?)
to enfold
in my
withering, neatly-voiceless
hands
saying and believing,
perhaps!
with this one,

I have justified
my existence