S M Y F S

Salingerism makes your fans sad
It makes your friends talk about you and then leave
It makes your ex-lovers give interviews and write novels
It will turn your house into a compound
If you manage to marry and produce a child
And believe me you will
it will hate you
If you have more than one child
some will actually love you
but will argue incessantly with the ones that don't
You will dislike them all regardless
Your spouse will then stop sleeping in the same bed
She'll sleep on the couch
You will do whatever it is you do again
because people have forgotten you
They will eat it up
And call it autobiographical
Because the less you want people to know
The more they find out
After awhile you will get tried of living in your compound
But you can't leave because people will want to talk to you
Than you will start sleeping outside and
NO ONE will sleep in the bed
It will be empty
At this point, you will dress in nothing but
a blotchy rose terry cloth robe
and house shoes
And you will walk your child's dog around the block in it
But no pictures of you will appear in the magazine
So you will do what it is that you do again
So it goes
Now you won't even leave your room
Not even to use the toilet
You'll pee out the window
You pretend to do what it is you do
but you are only making noises that resemble it
Then you will die
at age 145
Your spouse will be about
31
And you were about to divorce them anyway
Old Hag
And your family will not notice you are dead
Until the patch of grass where you kept peeing on grows back
Uh-oh
Better check on Daddy
They mention your death in Rolling Stone
and people go "Oh yeeeeah, that guy" and
"Wasn't he already dead?"
Anything will your signature on it will be worth more than
motherfucking uranium
Your work will become fashionable again
And some bright-eyed boy will study it
between its cover
identical to all its brothers
that always shows all the grimy fingerprints all over it
The sparkle of your labor
And think
"I want to be a hermit when I grow up"