A Failure

A failure picks up
a few scraps from his wreckage
and puts them into his bag.

When he gets home 
he tosses them onto
the kitchen table.

Tries to explain
where they once fit,
how they once

meant something, but 
“you had to be there.”
There was nobody there

then, of course. There’s
nobody there now either.
He’s talking to nobody

about a disaster nobody
cares about. He’s become
the mainstream media —

in the story, he bleeds
so he leads and no one
even notices because his blood’s

as thin as water. As thin
as excuses and histrionics,
as thin as the wind that’s

gone out of him. He stops talking.
Puts the pieces back in the bag.
Goes to bed. Doesn’t dream a thing.