Years ago, a writer named Dick,
                  with a book of fiction from a big house,
said angrily, What is any of this
                  compared to a wife and kid?
It was some sort of conference
                  and we were on display,
selling ourselves and our books
                  and not getting paid, or laid.
I see him now, looking across the table,
                  wanting out—of barrooms and darkness
and the cold infidelities
                  of constant self-expression
and endless self-congratulation—
                  into peopled sunlight, messy pedestrian cares.
It isn’t the money either, or lack of,
                  I long for the death of ambition.
I see him lifting his head into a nimbus
                  of cigarette smoke and metabolized beer,
then shaking his head, wanting to say
                  something, then getting up
to get another beer and saying
                  nothing, yet still feeling he had to
touch whoever was there with the words
                  that would undo all words.