The Big Girl With The Backpack

The big girl with the backpack

has a sleeping bag at her feet. 

She is dressed in fashionable sweat

pants and “fed up” t-shirt.

She picks a tune on an air

guitar as latte sippers walk on 

to rooms with gold couches,

windows and doors.

 

City streets interweave silver

through crowded sidewalks

where school tours and senators

clip clop on the pavement

art and the fat cheese eaters

mesh mash leather loathers

to places where they put their feet up.

 

The old buildings past their glory

and the new shops with neon

lights create shadows that ease

the summer’s heat and push the wind

up the narrow way where people live,

work and play on public display

with nod chins and open mouths,

closed children and hunger coughs.

The flies buzz and the bees die.

The tulips bend and a tall man sings

a gospel tune, loud with a smile

as the rich collar wine by

saying, shut up, happy holy guy. 

 

Some days the big girl feels like duck

-tapin her boobs down, cuttin’ off

her hair and wearin’ a business tie,

with a thumb pointed to Big Sur.

When she gets there she says,

she’ll lay around on the sand; drink

whiskey and swear and fuck

until her lips are not the only thing

chapped and hardcore.

 

Other days she feels like lying

in a bed with her best bear friend.

They’d read books of poems and eat

tomatoes and award winning cheese

while the sunset and the mid-west

lights radiated away to a future

supernova. Every couple minutes

they’d have laugh jags, she swears

as she smacks her jiggle thigh pie

and winks at the greybeard vending crack.

 

Then there are the days she wants

to walk around the city with witty notes

in a book and a camera, snap and zoom,

scribble and mutter at the popcorn

stores and silk shops, stare at diverse

people and ask for directions to make

-believe far off places

until the sun came back and she

found herself with a box of oranges

in the square by the hat store

where the hobos come for day

jobs and companionship,

breakfast oats and banana sandwiches.

 

There are days when she is not sure

what she feels,  and thinks perhaps she’ll

have a piece of dry bread and watch

the blue stand still as the barn swallows

swoop their song for love and bugs.

Maybe to top off the day she’ll wave

to the clouds that go where she liked to. 

 

Of course, there is the today that she does not

feel that she starts off with the rinse of her coffee cup, 

the fold of her towel and her extra

“one step at a time” t-shirt;  the political

cold sponge bath from a bucket on the grass

 of the capitol so she can stand herself to craft

a buck. So slowly a few dollars come,

as the almost hobos touch pity, and shame

cause they know they are all about lame

and they want the big girl with a smoker’s

voice to continue to sing

even if she is badly out of time and tune.