IN CAMOGLI by Dan Fante

It looks like the same ocean 
but this is Italy - not L.A. 

Sitting at sunset in a two-hundred-dollar-a day hotel 
by the sea 

All expenses paid - no limit on the drinks 

Reading my shit in rooms full of Fante fanatics 
where - sadly - everybody now speaks perfect coca-cola and wears Levis
and 
looks like Tom Cruise without the big teeth 

On this trip I've been a fine success at impersonating a writer 
my poetry - remarkably - even sounds like me 
before I lost my muse 
and became a hopeless moron-hasbeen-talentless-retard 
fuck 
with a freight train roaring through my mind 
chasing a ridiculous lost idea of literary perfection 

But I warn you 
I'm like a dented 1985 Ford 
with a busted radiator, 
a cracked windshield, 
and 3 bald tires 
speeding down the autobahn 

Don't try to diss me or pass me or call my bluff 
'cause - see 
when I'm cornered 
I can write like a gin-pissing-raw-meat-dual-carburator-V8-son-of-a-bitch 

even in Italy