almost okay

Marty Sherman:

It was weird that the first thing he did was change that last poem we found in his apartment. That's the one that appeared on the chalkboard in my kitchen one night two weeks after he died. I guess once he was dead, Dirk had decided to change the rhyme scheme from A-B-C-B to a more formal A-B-A-B. It's better.

M. Alan Pennywhistle:

I wish he would have trusted me enough to channel the new work through me. Even though Sherman's a touch typist, I'm actually a poet! I could have helped with structure and editing.

Marty Sherman:

Yeah, I heard Blowharde's a little miffed by Dirk using me to write the new stuff, but believe me it's no picnic staying up all night, swilling gin and typing until the sun comes up. Now that he's dead, Dirk's ten times as prolific as he ever was when he was alive. I don't think he wrote more than a poem a month the past few years. He was too busy drinking and betting the horses.

M. Alan Pennywhistle:

I haven't read the book, but I've seen a couple advance poems. He's a much better writer now that he's dead.

Zelda Dirkson (mother):

He was always up to no good.

Lisa Dirkson-Dean (ex-wife):

I wonder how much of an advance that low-life Sherman got from the publisher?

The last poem Prof. Dirk Beat wrote while alive, revised:

The fetal position, huddled in bed
I moan, I cry, I weep
Nightmares dance inside my head
And all I want is sleep

And a preview from his posthumous volume, 'Poems From The Other Side', due out in March:

Am I Ever Forever

I am the Pyramids
Those great piles of stone
And sweat & blood & bone
Are me

I am the Statue of Liberty
That cold bitch rising from the sea
Her arm aloft, her hollow torch
All of it - me

I am every sheet of glass
Every steel I-beam, each rivet & weld
That melts together, stairways to god
All are me

I feel the slow burn of noon heat
Between sunrises & sunsets
Cast long shadows as I turn my back
On the light & seek the darkness
An endless cycle of Man-made folly
I reach impossibly higher until
Like a house of cards

I tumble back to earth

A fragile pile of bleached bones
Baking in lifeless desert sand
Hot winds howling through my skull

Forever

-Prof. Dirk Beat