Shall I be on the sidewalk

Two Mses


I'm keeping these two manuscripts
Until I have the cash
To print them.
Their progenitors a little less,
But these two books are gems,
Articulate, distinct and getting bigger.
Should I trash the verse I wrote
Ere I became alive?
It can be good.
It may be indecision.


3-21-14

G.

I called and you were sleeping.
You woke up.  We talked.
My heart came back.
I am a real boy.


3-21-14



Shall I be on the sidewalk


Shall I be on the sidewalk
With a shopping cart of cans,
Sleeping on a porch where I'm not wanted?
Going nowhere, everybody's end,
Despite the goals accomplished prematurely.
My sister.  God my sister!
I'll even talk to her,
A homophobe that joined a crowd against me.
I'm so lonesome, I may talk to god.
No motive but to be the greatest
Poet since Millay,
But read her once,
That's all there is to read.
Unlike Keats.  I plunge into his sea,
Forever swimming and forever touching.
It never ceases.  Keats is evergreen.


3-21-14

Rap


New people in my life and I don't like it,
New faces, names and personalities.
Tattoos all.  And rock and rap.  No music
With the charms to soothe the savage breast.
I was not born late, and not too early.
The world is gone.  And ugliness is king.
They took the black man's rights.  And in return,
He gave them rap.   And violence is god.
And the people love it.  This is death.


3-20-14

Off The Cuff


I was just repeating
What the doctor said to me.
I didn't have an inkling what it meant.
Reading tea leaves, searching in
Abstruse astrology,
Are the only answers heaven sent.


She asked me, “Can I help you?”
But a teller in a bank.
I said, “I wish you could.  I really doubt it.”
Do what people tell you or else
God almighty spank.
I've done until I cannot do without it.


3-21-14