Drafts

Food Stamps

They send you paperwork that you can’t take,
Proof of something that doesn’t exist, is what they want.
Roomate’s freckled and frustrated, sighs and head shaking.
They send you a request for a lease you don’t have,
And you have to get the right paperwork to prove you are homeless,
After all. So you apply for Aid to needy and disabled, but
You must wait two months to be approved. Food bank time,
And you do not look forward to the Christian preaching
That comes with processed food and government cheese,
But you thank god and are thanking God finally
With the breeze and a cheap Pyramid cigarette, too strong,
But you are living now for $3.75 and puffing like there’s no tomorrow
You’re seeking a poem here where the fox thin as a vine
limps down the street, a crescent of bones and skin,
God’s- eye yarn and toothpicks, prayers that sigh.
This is the wonder of nature and it’s all the same.





Book Review without Bio

You are nobody of significance; your PhD, a piece of shit,
Turdable and non-refundable. The editor wants more details,
And at 1400 words, food stamps and state disability payments,
You want only the sound of an acoustic guitar with the breeze,
The large white cloud unfolding like a gator’s jaw.
Lady Creole had passed away, bent over in her rocking chair,
Wood-carved she’d bragged, gray hair spread like a fan,
Heart stopped like a torn dollar bill. You are pennies collected
And heavy as the winter cold. You are thinking, surely Lady Creole
Knew something of grace, thankful all the time.
You are nobody of significance; your Phd, a piece of shit,
Turdable and non-refundable. The editor wants comments
Of style and writer and you are the sad song, the trouble unfolding
Like your god-damned memory. Forgetting was but a snap
And quip, the rage of nowhere everywhere. Lips pursed
You paint sunflowers and black hearts, and wheeze for free.
Lady Creole and phenomenal fiction writer, dead on the scene.
Vincent gone at 35, leaving rumors of revolution, he’d made prof,
and you are the coffee cake and black mud brew you commiserated
over at the Denver Café, and we are changing day by day.
Lady Creole never finished her doctorate, told you, you’d regret quitting,
And now she’s dead, visiting the empty air.
You are somebody of significance, And this is the new poem
You will spend a lifetime writing.



Love

I fell in love with my father’s hard heart,
Fell for the quick reprimand. Dark moustache,
Slender tall walk through the house as if he were a god.
I fell in love with distance early: Don’t touch me.
I fell for the sky, the stars whispering lies.
I said surely god is alive. I was dancing in the clubs,
Sweaty and drunk, re-living forgetting.
There were no trees in the desert. We were tumbleweeds
And curse. We were 100 degrees and fervid prayers.
The irrigation ditches unromantic and filled with bullfrogs
And crawdads. We were counting Mexicans crossing over.
We were counting ashy clothes and beggars asking for love.
We stole clothes off lines, Harley’s off porches,
And we were living marijuana haze, and today poets
Don’t like stories. They are dancing naked to Ginsberg
And Blake, dear Blake’s gone electronic.