A National Artist Award Nominee Secretly To the Envied Award Winner

I am, like you, awash in a stream of pride and insecurities,

like you, co-opted by industries to present his tawdry human

résumé, account executive appeal, an enigma and/or shit

upon this earth that only wants to pretend life’s so pretty.

I am, like you, a corruptible artisan, willing to ass-bend

for someone’s fingering of my soul with books’ aesthetics,

patrons that we are to a common taste we lyricize as brooks.

With this Martian caliber of mine, I shoot a mirror’s smile

with alacrity, uniform praise being your ideal for proper

friendships, lordship that you are, avatar to an ego’s model,

filigreed film of a flatulent fornicator with fiefdoms, pre-

1780 Kantian diminished-rights non-criticality, your

astuteness put asunder, leavened bread to your fame.

Hunger, the plumbing for restless arts, carves sibilance

from acquaintances, rascals, even pederasts, lifelines to

aristocrats, and I sense endless abominable courtesies.

I am, like you, a waterfall of recurrent pride, insecurities.