David Nelson Bradsher - Etching

The etching stared out, black and grey and dirty,
a portrait of the artist as insane,
his shirtless torso sagging, thick for thirty,
his flesh a canvas of regret and pain.

He held his pen aloft, an ink conductor
prepared to swath his tool in southpaw scrawl.
He wrote of her, his love, and how he fucked her
like some deflated whore or blow-up doll.

His sickness was his cure: a need to write
no matter the allusion, muse, or theme;
addiction sucked him like a parasite
and locked him in a drug-descendant dream.

He died a junkie, slumped against the sink,
riddled with needle-marks that bled red ink.

David Nelson Bradsher

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