You preach to your choir,
I bitch to mine; our metastatic
Zens combine to make
liars of everyone eventually.
Let’s work on a list to rank
and place the worst men of all
time; why don’t we start
with me, just as an example.
Sexually transmitted affections,
yield to kids and cold sores;
throat chemo for a non-smoker
is just life being a dick.
My memory foam mattress
can’t forget anything,
from each sex stain to night
sweats over money.
The therapist comes clean,
says, Just because you
can’t find Heaven, it don’t mean
you’re already in Hell.
Cleave close to the joke: diseases
kill as best they can to win
the Bubonic Plaque. But even
cancer just wants a place to live.
George Murray is the author of six books of poetry, including Diversion (ECW, 2015), Whiteout (2012), The Rush to Here (Nightwood, 2007) and The Hunter (McClelland & Stewart, 2003), as well as one best-selling book of aphorisms, Glimpse (ECW 2010), and the children’s book Wow Wow and Haw Haw (Breakwater, 2014). His work has appeared in magazines and journals across Canada and around the world and in over 20 anthologies. Murray has taught poetry at several institutions, most recently in University of British Columbia’s MFA program and at the University of Toronto. He is the former poetry editor at the Literary Review of Canada, and from 2003 to 2011 was the owner and operator of the popular literary website www.Bookninja.com. He is currently the editor of www.NewPoetry.ca. He lives in St. John’s where he is the city’s Poet Laureate.
