When Poetry Doesn’t Pay

A Work in Progress
131

They all had good reason to dislike him

Briseis because of E. Jean Carroll

Aldington because he despised liars

Ezra because ignorance affronted him

Glenn Hughes because his movie was canceled

Babette because she hated outright boors

Catullus because he just had enough of Caesar

Donal because he wasn’t getting paid

Sitting on the steps of Denny Hall

Unemployed, destitute, his stock in free fall

Ever more fraught getting cash advances

Becoming a burden to friends’ sidelong glances

Essentially homeless at no fixed abode

Already in character wherever he strode

Sitting outside a hall of learning

Self-taught, unhoused, hungry and yearning

Still with an eye on what could come next

Awaiting a turn in the author’s text

Confident a hero is loved by the gods

Donal was ingested into digital pods

Deployed to the front lines Donal found purpose

Just like Aldington he was no longer surplus

Poetry spoken from the nosecone of a drone

Donal clones signed sent on missions alone

With no formal degree snubbed by the academy

An itinerant rhapsode making rhapsody

Summoned for house calls by click-speaking mice

Squeaking cleanly via high-speed fiber optics

Launched from trenches full of lice and ticks

By warriors targeting the most valued picks

There’s something that happens when eye to eye

Two people with mutual respect don’t lie

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                      2026