Poems October 2019

7th and 31st
Somewhere btw 25 and 45
That cigarette
That tan
That shine
That smell

Whatcha doing here, guy-o?
Where’s your mom gone to?
Hiding somewhere like a pregnant dog
I’ll betcha…

I’ll betcha if I was a pregnant dog someone’d stop
If I was small with a bent ear
Even if’s I had mange
Someone’d scoop me up with an old plastic bag
Feed me cookies
Take me someplace with a bath fer fucksake
Then post me on social media and shit

One of those guys could get knifed
Or keel over out of nowhere
That dirty tan hand on someone else’s cigarette butt
The shine and the smell worse than mange

The wind which is so busy
Has time enough to listen to me
It goes everywhere moving everything
From leaves to pollen
Birds to boats
Delighting a child by making a paper cup dance across the street into a gutter drain

It hears me

What do I do with these things in me
These gifts for no one?
My czarless fabergé eggs
Once the property of a lady
Hers no more

The dust of a thousand things
Throw them into the wind
The inklings of one man
Scatter with the wind

On a leather jacket day
You might be walking
Something unsaid might come to you
You might think of me
Distracted as you are
A leaf hurls itself off a maple
The wind catches it before it hits the ground