To some, writing sucks. To others, dying while writing sucks more. To most, dying while writing poetry sucks the hardest.

It was perfectly apropos that the barely known poet, Clifton Frost, no relation, was found dead at his writing desk face down on a sole sheet of paper, pen in hand. Days before, he had made a formal announcement, a drunken boast at the neighborhood bar that he was abandoning post-modernism for the much more respected classical form. No one really understood what he meant, nor did they care.

It is important to not kid ourselves; he was a specimen of many years of unhealthy living.  His early death was inevitable. He was a fragile vase glued haphazardly by careless stupid kids, and if you looked at it funny, it would fall apart.

To be clear, no one had to look at him in order for him to die, and further, no one ever looked at him. It was difficult. That night, all 306 pounds of him disappeared from the public eye. To think, if he hadn’t destroyed his liver with trendy malt liquor beverages, he could have weighed 308 pounds.

He retreated to his study to create like he had never done before. He was feeling it. The inner muse was all over him, coursing through his blood, or so he thought, for he was wrong. It was not inspiration filling his soul, it was the much more complex heart failure.

After the police did all they could, which was secret farts and careless paperwork, Detective Ranside remained and examined the sheet of paper beneath the dead poet’s head. It read: “Roses are red, violets are blue, I am dead, and now, so are you.”

The detective cracked a smile before keeling over dead.