park 2
i've never been here before, she said
i never would have seen it
if you hadn't shown it to me
i miss you lena, the sign said
ten days later, and it was gone
the wall a group project
the garden began as a storefront market
became a collective hogshead
turned into a co-op corner, veggies and beans
shake that booty, that's one thing
that she would never say to me
the haight falls into the mission, unaware
garden plot bursts with cornrow abundance
dig sow rake turn plot plot plot
in the everlasting cycle of hunger
three-story apartments crumble
over one-way cobblestone streets
like a mother's dream of venice
smoke flows through our streets
a canal of languages and substances
controlled or not, belligerent insouciance
cemetery around the corner
"twenty minute parking"
no time to die
painted layers bulge plywood scaffold
sidewalk manifestos provoke sensual abandon
i forget what those words meant
he doesn't talk, just dig dig digs
bare arms burnt brown as nipples
skin skin skinny chest wrinkles
he had white hair on chest and head
scalp sheaves hung past his shoulders
like a broom that got a new job
i'm sick of cleaning up everyone else's mess
i want postcards of accurate accusations
to absolve me from seasons of madness:
her father had moved their family into a trailer
when the house burned down, and that's where
she met Shakespeare on bedtime escapades
book after book of laws and rules
i want a page to teach me how to leave my body
too late for that forgetness
forget this, i want to be the greatest poet
that has ever lived, ever in the whole wide world
or at least learn how to get through today
posted by judy j @ 2:05 PM
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