While Reading "Tropic of Capricorn"

Lord, how Miller could fulminate,
Decry his low station in life, then profess
Not to care--a lesson that I should heed?
His relentless whine,
Even when bragging,
Discolors his colorful neon vistas.
Impressive, his rapturous laundry lists--
Exhaustive, exhausting, excruciating--
But to what end?
He spouts a slew of philosophies
To explain the human condition
(His, mostly),
None anchored, none cogent, and none pragmatic,
But o the grim glamor of those tropes!
He basks in self-pity, then turns around
And confesses his criminalities,
A cynical Robin Hood, perhaps,
Except that his marks are as poor as he.
His poetry--heart-thumping, racy calypsos--
Has gritty charm, though discordantly
His roiling streams of consciousness
Overtop the dams and crumble the quays.
Interspersed throughout, those infamous flashes
Of bawdiness, predator habits, and sprees;
The harsh fornications and love-em but hate-'em,
Unabashed, macho misogyny
That earned him bans
On this book and "Cancer"
Till the sixties' rulings of clemency.
Most engaging: those glimpses of bygone times,
With workaday lives revolving on dimes:
The telegram office! The floozy-filled dance hall!
Sen-Sen and onions and jujubes!
The Proustian slice of rye with butter!
The complex motives, the simple pleasures,
The mixture of desperation and glee,
Shall not be matched in commensurate volumes--
For Miller has whittled this out of his soul.