The Secret

Someone tell me the secret
Of how to love another
When you have left them
Or they have left you

We are all already gone
All of this, is already gone

How do you do anything at all?

Your Car

Was down by the food coop today
So maybe you were shopping
And when I walked through ducked away
Behind an aisle, or a display

But you might have been using it
To go to a meeting of yoga teachers or
Take a walk and get a meal with the man
You're with if you're still with him

Or the next one, or the next.

Do you know at 12:30 at Davis Park
When the siren wails and everyone picks
Up their heads for that second
When the world might be cracking open

And then goes back to business?
Well, you have gone, you really have
Though I refuse to acknowledge it
And in going you set loose the twin chained

Animals of my sorrow and loss
You set them loose

And drove off in a metaphysical motor home
With 6 new men and my shattered life

That 12:30 siren is wailing through
The hills and dales of my being

I've been defeated.

So even though this poem sucks. It is sincere.

Mentally Ill Men and Young Women

Two mentally ill men smoking cigarettes
On the corner by subsidized housing
Near the crosswalk

One young woman crossing
With a bag from the food co-op
Halfway between curbs

Brutal rape, coitus interruptus,
martyrdom on the cross

Or an indifferent glance?

In 7 seconds we'll know.

Dogs and Men - Draft 1

Main street : noisy, dirty, close, hot

Dogs circling, sniffing crotches

Some under awnings
incapable without coffee. And also
Incapable with coffee

Women passing by

The teacher who was with the woodworker
Was walking with a wide-hipped late summer
Fucker

The builder who has snowmobiles
Is now fucking the woodworker

Instead of his wife

Late summer on Main Street
Hot, dirty, cheap, and transient

Come looking for dogs
You will lack nothing

Come seeking a man

And you may leave disappointed