Sat at his desk
And composed
Long poems
With ink
And tissue paper
He often crumpled up
The good ones
And tossed them in the trash
With the banana peels
And the morning's coffee grounds
Coffee scented poems were all the rage
In Victorian parlours but
The God of Useless Things
Preferred the fish bones buried
Deeper down in the trash
Fish bones
You see
Had the potential to get
Lodged in your throat
And choke you
To blue-faced death
The Fish Bone King
That's what they called him
Down at the Literal Cafe
What with his club foot
And frilly shirts
Dressed like a funeral
And half as serious
The Title Tyrant
Is what his lovers called him
The men and the women
Who littered his bed
And hated all the canoe bark
That stuffed the pillows
In a lumpy eternity
That Fucker
that God of Useless things
Wrote poems nobody read
Recited them to stunned audiences
In ancient pretentious dialects
And pretended he understood them
No one ever applauded
And often the crowd sat silent
As the God in the room
Bowed backwards off the stage
And disappeared out the side door
Leaving the room bereft
Of electricity
And purpose
Oh yes
The God of those Little Useless Things
That King of Tasteless Fish Bones
That Fucker All in Black
Knew the truth of every poet's toil
And just how pointless
Art
Really was in the face of the Modern
But even the Useless
Are pretty to look at
And the Word of God
Will always be deliciously bitter
