poor

talkingoutloud

 

 

 

What do we want from the poor?

We mostly want our jackets back. We

want, not to see, their indifference or the

discomfit, missed belt loops or the layers

of blazoned coverings like a map of the lost

village that might divide, piled next to

canvas, plastics or excess cardboard with

greenish-blue scatter on heads with lips

no cuspidor could braid.

 

 

Our wish is to see , ourselves, in the homeless,

rightly suited and proper, analogous to the simpler

more basic USA death as the righteous trainers

of the anagrams, arranging letters.

 

 

 

We want folk who can burst boiles and write stanzas

from the deck of their right hands and then

engrave, sing, play, act for the american idol

recording session and to sit straight on

trains or slightly reclined for trips over

thirty minutes. That's what we want from

the vagrant, to dance when we say dance

and , if nothing else, to dance like us,

or those in immediate control. It's an

unwritten law to find someone, urine stained,

discursive, moving from point to

point and from topic to topic

like a box of wooden straws in

an overly wooden rectangle,

with hand out as anthology.

 

 

But there is little pain in knowing the truth in trains.

That the tracks emit heat by radiation whether in

Chicago or Montgomery.

Who knew, that this negro dance I was doing, all along,

was the devils dance and the light shining in

the sliver-cracks of the boxcar wasn't the moon

at all but the death star, waiting for the exine

of the dirty grains I called sacrament.

 

 

And my heart aches, not for the poems we wrote but for

the ones we shouldn't, for the old bodies, without home

or adornment, that would carry themselves to the suburbs

without windows in the reality without updated kitchens

 

 

We wish it true, the lie, exhihilo; nothing is made/

Reviews

[sienikeha]

another majestic write. thoughtful. it brings me back. to a life within this life before this life.

a nutshell tale:
i grew up on a food bank diet. shared a bed with cockroaches and mice. when i was 8, my father stopped gambling and we moved to a home with an updated kitchen. nothing else changed.

i ran away for the first time when i was 15. re-created my upbringing. polished my thumb and hitched my way away from home. slept behind dumpsters and in ditches. met the world's dirtiest and saintliest scoundrels and deities.

when you go for life's jugular, you bear witness to all of her crevices. after awhile, little is shocking. i observed and continue to observe. i began writing. and continue to.

thank you, hde, for your expressions

[Emily B]

I feel so very tired some days. I work. I slave. There is never enough money to do the things we need. There is never enough left over to live like I want to. There are so many lies. I wish some days that I could believe them.