He had a back office in his older brother’s
advertising agency and understood the human asshole.
He turned his father’s small inheritance over and over
on hemorrhoid ads between three-hour lunches
at the Plaza every day and cocktails at five-thirty
with different dressy women waiting in our front office.
We joked that he fucked them up the ass to make more customers
and were nauseated by him because he picked his ears
with the lead end of his lead pencil as he argued and argued
hemorrhoid copy with us on nauseating Mad. Ave. mornings.
Why argue? It must have been for executive power-feelings
because the copy never changed. Every week, the poor
bleeding assholes bought the shit. When my mind
began to get fucked and go as black as his inner ears
I quit as broke as I began, remembering his prophecy:
that the last working television set in the world
would be showing a hemorrhoid ad for ANUSALL
at Armageddon, that it would have been written
by him, that he would be watching it at 6:00 P.M.
in the bomb-cellar lounge of the Park Plaza Hotel
with a blonde’s ass in one hand and a scotch in the other,
and that he would die happy, with his old man’s
money intact and his asshole too, unlike us prat-boys.
(Alan Dugan)
More Poetry from Alan Dugan:
Alan Dugan Poems based on Topics: World, Madness, Happiness, Advertising, Prophets & Prophecies- Two Quits And A Drum, And Elegy For Drinkers (Alan Dugan Poems)
- Wall, Cave, And Pillar Statements, After Asoka (Alan Dugan Poems)
- Against A Sickness: To The Female Double Principle God (Alan Dugan Poems)
- On The Civil War On The East Coast Of The United States Of North America 1860-64 (Alan Dugan Poems)
- Internal Migration: On Being On Tour (Alan Dugan Poems)
- Portrait From The Infantry (Alan Dugan Poems)
Readers Who Like This Poem Also Like:
Based on Topics: World Poems, Happiness Poems, Madness Poems, Prophets & Prophecies Poems, Advertising PoemsBased on Keywords: armageddon, joked, plaza, ads, television, fucked, cocktails, agency, nauseating, lunches, asshole