a poem for warren zevon

I want you to tell me if, on Grammy night, you didn’t get one hell of a kick
out of all those bling-it-ons in their bullet-proof broughams,
all those line-managers who couldn’t manage a line of coke,

all those Barmecides offering beakers of barm –
if you didn’t get a kick out of being as incongruous
there as John Donne at a Junior Prom.

Two graves must hide, Warren, thine and mine corse
who, on the day we met, happened
also to meet an individual dragging a full-length cross

along 42nd Street and kept mum, each earning extra Brownie points
for letting that cup pass. The alcoholic
knows that to enter in these bonds

is to be free, yeah right.

the poem continues at the TLS here.