Janis Joplin as a Fish Swimming in Gasoline

 

Day Twenty-Nine

Seems like you were always leaving
Or left. Leaving with 

Your roaring engine voice.

Left in the split

Of your fire-cracked glacier voice.

Fleeing the Texan woman's life 

At your throat.

Left-field, gone big in The City

Singing in colours the let me be

Purple plea of the wounded.

Seducer of tied-off fuses

With no match left unlit

By your spilt whiskey voice. 

Leaving behind the foreboding, 

Real-known moment,

Of needing to swim in gasoline

When you couldn't quit lighting matches. 

Left lonely by lovers, with

Only what was left in the wake

Of your Russian roulette voice;

Your Pollock-paint life

Of daring too much

To be too different.

Leaving us at twenty-seven

With only your brass rocket voice.