We’re looking for some help for Hunter.
Are you a night owl? Would you be interested?
It took me only a moment to answer
yes to everything.
Nothing that Hunter did could bother me.
The only thing that got to me
was the cigarette smoke.
There was so much of it.
Louder, louder,
slower, slower.
You could trek and ski by day
and do shitloads of coke at night.
There were dealers and busts –
and mountains’ worth of cocaine
flown in on Cessnas.
You’d suddenly see
famous people everywhere.
I decided early on never to get wasted.
I’d seen the scorn he reserved for those
who turned up to pay homage to him,
got completely stoned and started acting
stupid. They were never welcomed back.
It never occurred to me
it would happen on my watch.
My legs buckled and I fell to my knees.
It’s not that I didn’t see it coming,
because he spoke about it a lot.
He was not having fun.
He had this Hemingway crush.
Let’s just dust off
those old negatives from Aspen.
Louder, louder,
slower, slower.
(From He was a handful)
Verbatim Poetry 