Kicking Edgar Allan Poe Poem by Garry Stanton

Kick you when you’re down?
No.
The bags under your eyes
Speak of despair,
Demoralization.

Why would she not love you?
Was she the first to kick Edgar Allan Poe?
Was it her mother who did the damage?

And young Virginia leaving you,
That was too bad.
Dying at twenty-four
is never good, even in 1847.

Dark daguerreotype,
Lopsided pain, kicking your life
From within, internal Griswold.

The drink got you, some say.
Or was it cholera or poverty,
the creator’s disease?

I will not kick Edgar Allan Poe.
Penguins may be elementary, but stop!
he has had enough,
it seems to me.