patrons with bottles of patron in poetry

searching for Medici
looking for a patron saint
to protect us from the hustle’s taint
someone to write a few nice things about
every few months when they remember to care
go back to New York City to scream in the streets
until we get arrested or grow gray old and die there

searching for Medici
not to love me or to teach me
but to pay me a living wage for a handful of poems
then pretty much otherwise leave me the fuck alone
to my business of howling in the night
on tiny half-darkened stages
in congress with these obscure bards and these sages
I like to consider my sisters and brothers
in tucked away places absorbing the truth of the other
reporting back intermittently to the patron with a bow
only when the splitting hangovers allow

searching for Medici
that won’t make me be too preachy
won’t leave me feeling too itchy
with compromise or bed-bug apartments
let me just more or less be me
Medici, Medici