Sleeping in the Park
Nothing else matters
but the clothes on your back and
a chance to sense that somewhere.someone
is enjoying the same sunrise as you are.
I write these words at a frantic pace so I
do not give myself an opportunity to think.All
around me is unified panic-stares that foreshadow
a blinding rage that builds and builds.until murmurs
of death become screams from the precipice.
Then I slowly dust off the remains of last night's
escape and look toward the east,
Same sun.same life.different demise.
Sometimes Incomplete
Severance pay for living is never collected when the widow lays her husband in the garbage along with the rest of the dead letters that wither with time...
No Guardian Insurance man will be sending a check, nor will a Hearst full of flowers drive down Main Street with lighted autos in tow.
It is the alone who die, shriveled inside a closet like abode-who will never hear the horns of a celebratory band. No, a story of failure is still only taken at face value in an obituary buried on page 37 in the Woonsocket Call.
The young will still ride their scooters the first warm day of spring and never consider the day when time will be spent forever in the dark.The old will trim the one small hedge in the yard--then lie down; wondering why they still have a five year old calendar hanging in the broom closet.
Then more will die-some eulogized, some left to the rats.
Some old, some young, some never loved, others adored.
Some thought of daily, others never mentioned again.
You-the Poet
You try to steal a moment in time-then jot your observations down in a jaded notebook that is yellowed with age.
Blind stares into the crowd often leave you exasperated, catching your breath when cleavage converses with endorphins.
It is you for a moment, a figure alone, focused on all who dare to speak, act, and feel around you.
You could be sipping a beer, or walking in the park, or driving around aimlessly towards a destination that is never reached
Or never cared to be reached.
But it's different for you. Lines filled with emotion and raw anger fill other's palate
And you hear, you hear, and write sentences that nobody outside your invisible perceptions will dare admit to.
Then you walk into your next scene-your next patron fix,
And jot, and jot.
To the Women Smoking by the Bookstore
Night crawlers-showing leg while puffing on a Winston-seeing
artistic creativity creeping out of the poetry section.
The girls snicker as the man walks by with impunity.He'll reveal
his guns, reassuring his masculinity-and try to justify all the
lost worlds.
Never conquered.
Never gained.
