Poetry

Another empty shift bagged
and I’m eighty dollars richer,
a day poorer, and still in debt.
This is the way of the world
and despite my efforts and experience
I’ve yet to find a better way.

I’m churning butter
on a spinning earth
that has no taste for butter.

I’m building low tide
sandcastles on a beach
made out of sugar and salt.

When tomorrow morning comes
I’ll wake up like I have
every morning before and live
another day full of a meaning
that doesn’t mean much to anyone
else just like everyone else.

Rain. The homeless man
in an orange beanie
follows another man
to the gas station
across the glossed street,
asks for money. The man
presumably says no, rubs
the homeless man’s beanie,
heads inside. The homeless,
resigned and ignored, plops
his pack next to a trash can
and sits, the night an empty
comfort until the other man
walks out, six pack in hand,
and gives it to the incredulous
hobo, shakes his hand,
wishes him well –
gifts him a night
washed in drunken oblivion
instead of damp shivered sobriety.

To the new streets
of foggy mountain
foreign nowhere,
the same as the familiar
ones I’ve left before.

To this plastic heart
lost in the back-alley
storefronts of places
I’ve already been
to somewhere else.

To the muddy
Appalachian Spring,
washed orange in the filth
of the lives I’ve left
behind, the earth stained
brown, and I am again
washed anew.

The good poem
is a false movement
in the corners of
our eyes, a predator
our predator eyes
can’t quite detect.

It is a voice
that won’t stop talking
when we’re trying
to focus on what
we think
is the truth.

It is a star
we’ll never see
and as soon as
it’s written it’s
gone someplace else.