American poet

for Joe Bolton (1961 to 1990)

Lost name of the archives,
one of those suicide poets who
didn’t leave as bright a name
as Anne Sexton or Sylvia Plath,
I found you myself by chance.
A webpage in the 2010s
with stained-glass bordering,
appropriate to martyred saints.
Kentucky-born, dead in your 28th year,
all of your poems sound
the same note of lament.
A chemical imbalance raised
to beauty by its form.
We must not valorise, of course.
You should have lived.
And if you had you might have left
a wider range of tones,
brought out by therapy and Valium,
not just an autumn leaf
addicted to the windowsill
of a burnt-out home in Golden Pond
in which a drunk lays on a broken couch.