The Starving Artist | Rp Verlaine
To new addictions
it seems now
I must add narcissism.
Admiring work
on a coffee house wall
pencil portraits
looking not like
victims or…
“I’m good and cheap”
says the artist
too thin but her smile
is pretty when
I say OK.
Adding a few years
she tells me
she’s 22.
I pose not at all
as her lines converge.
Dark graphite
finding light
on paper
in her steady hand.
We talk about or I do
of the novelty of nothing
“uh-huh,” she says.
Till it becomes a habit
a drug of choice.
“Uh-huh.
What do you do?” she asks.
“Nothing.” I tell her.
“You hungry?”
“Starving! Pizza works. Will
you feed a starving artist?”
she jokes.
“Make me better looking
and I will” and she does.
Later, she eats five
of the eight slices
of a medium pie.
Kissing me twice for tipping
her twenty besides
her fee
and the pizza.
I look at the drawing all day.
Ah, to love
one’s self…
later, I put it
in a frame in
the closet…
You can only love yourself so much.
