1 One Poet 4 Man

Because the warden got tired watching iron bars fatigue with sad stories and inmate dreams sidestepping an eternity of promised Sunday miracles, you woke up too late to be of any use to the beggars hanging around your powder puff wish list of daydream prayers, demanding more than pursestrings, manna or redemption.

After dark the road less traveled, spirals downhill to nowhere, and belly dancers shake shake, and shoppers clamor for true believer bargains, and the scores to settle and thought bubble battles get mediated by stiff arm crossing guards at the gates of the field of fictitious dreams, everyone wants to play ball in.

Just about that time lepers wake in alms houses, loud with wagers betting on better body parts, the one legged man trying on pants, the handless women stretching into fingerless gloves, and no one is more surprised than this poet, how dark a poem this turned out to be, on its way to anticipated birthdays, and quite slumbers.

Wealth without tenderness or calming mercy;
trains without backbones of conscionable
destinations; terrains without variegation,
powdered skies or romantic notions; momentum
without a forward plan or direction; music
without cadence, lilt or sound; love without
the embracing of duality; houses without a
home sweet home orientation; trade without
consensual and permission granted agreements

A mother and a daughter bruised by the
antecedents of a father’s rage, live in a mansion
across the street from a pedigreed polo field;
unknown about, invisible really, and are as
forgettable as the death of one of them in the
backyard pool, glared at by a sky crossing sun

Bounce without vibrance or enthusiasm; smoke
without forest fires signalling aggressive
intentions; hope without blind prejudice;
symmetry without saddle sore mimicry,
paintings without the profanity of bigotry;
prayers without soul crushing beggery; cliffs
without compliant and loyal lemmings; hunger
without edible or locatable food; crime without
culpability, and white men without the comfort
of their guns