Portland

Downtown I put on my heart helmet.
Where Dublin's heroin lounges
in alcoves and side streets,
just out of reach,
Portland's meth stares fixedly at you
from your shoes,
bellows wildly at you as
you sidestep past
on the busy asphalt.
"STOP ABSORBING ME" perhaps,
or some such other puzzling utterance,
some such near-profound statement
of existence
that for a moment
or for any number of these moments
it doesn't seem so far fetched,
does it,
the notion that schizophrenics are prophets.

A man good-naturedly flying a kite
the size of an espresso in the crosswalk,
a whole city block of books
to comfort me into believing everything will be ok.
A man with drum sticks stands or sits outside,
busily pat-patting them arhythmically on a parking meter,
a fire hydrant,
asking for my loose change
and seeming to find god in the revelation
of a pretty face
beneath my haggard bike helmet,
beneath my rough rain gear,
beneath my Ringo Starr haircut.
I laugh at his face aghast,
it isn't, never was for me,
this face of mine.
I dress my cheekbones in boy clothes.

A rotund black man with a voice
that sounds as though it were being squeezed from a tube of toothpaste
the warm waft of weed from a park bench,
legal as the scent of cherry pie,
a man in a neon yellow construction suit
holds a nearly empty gallon jug of apple juice
and a man with a strawberry beard smiles at a seagull.

Reviews

[wolfshrew]

I can see all of this so clearly, not only from the location we have in common, but from the ruggedly beautiful way that it is written. I could have read this for days more, nodding my head and feeling warm from it.

[M. Shepherd]

:) we shall walk down these streets sometime m'lady
I also like to think this one will continue to be added upon as I continue to observe portland

[Ed Hart]

i love to lose myself in the parade of images lilting down your page like leaves in no hurry to land

[M. Shepherd]

:) thank you Ed - I'm thrilled to hear that you enjoy it.

[. serah .]

-- i haven't been to portland but the atmosphere seems to have eclectic elements... -- very cinematic stuff, Marcie... it reads like a unique, vivid and intriguing biography of a city in this moment in time...

[jacob erin-cilberto]

you so remind of the Beat poets...

yes, schizophrenics i think live in a better world than we do.

and they see that salvation that is not evident in the real world.

i'd like to see a neon sign that says "read this poem, it's for your own good"
because most aren't paying attention...and that weed is an escape...we're all looking for that.