Occupation

I thought about being a chemist. 

Then a sociologist, environmental activist

a speaker at a house, a radio host, a journalist.

But none would let me read and write

poems and drink coffee and smoke

hand rolled cigarettes or  twist

old railways and sandy toes in to great

white pines of who the hell knows.

 

So I wrote poems for the dead

and for one day children to read.

So I could wipe the dust off

of failure and hope for something

real inside.  All my poems;

master in making bonnet forms,

the lazy, poorly crafted ones,

even the poems from the teenage years 

where I screamed in and liquefied

my inner clots, the twenty’s some

poems that I learned humility and strength

through idiot adventures and musings of echoes.

These are the poems that I give you

big world with your big world problems.

I have cursed you and I have worshipped you. Still

 

 

when I read my lines you leaned into me

with your ear on my mouth as if I were an a.m

radio playing American bandstand polkas and old

country favorites with fireside chit-chat.

So hungry for a knock on wood thing

your eyes watered and your mouth fell open. 

 

After the reading you came to me. Touched

my hand and thanked me and hesitantly

said, “You’re a real thing.” 

 

I was so awkward  unaware  that what you

hunted for was not the fire or the beat.

Dumb to all you needed I didn’t associate

your cure with a  glimpse of yourself through

another.  Big world with big world loneliness

 

I am here.  Right next to you.  Arms

outstretched to you. The calluses

on my knees and fingertips; my fat

dry tongue and knotted hair on the floor

 -your servant. Here to sing if you wish.

To howl or weep in public at your lover’s funeral

or at your soldiers flag folding. I am the taps;

the tink tank of coins  in your pocket

war and your monster pet that purrs.

Handle me with your ears. With your eyes, close them. 

I am the mud, the swamp and the bend of street

signs in polluted cities. 

I am your anger and your meditative fat.

What you spill out is what I tuck in.