#wyo charles

She always had the note to change the track

At the local bar you worked with because it

Was written in the Brooklyn Vegan

“Henceforth its all draft” she cackled

But you knew the price of an ink job

And 100 is 100 for a bump out the door

I guess she was ripping us off

But I was starving anyway

Now I don’t ride a bike or spin a platter

I ask real nicely and give a cigarette

To the boys in red

It’s hard

That little fruit talking to you

The bag boy hating to see them go

But you had the spending money

They said they were hot & spicy

A cheap price to bruise the flesh

“Gently, towards the middle of the bag”

Putting it in the trunk yourself

It’s hard not to cut sitting on the bumper

Cool, sun through tint warm, to refrigerate

You’ll peek for three hours

Why go to city anymore

When your brothers, sisters, & the pale people

Just hate their relationship with the boulevard planters

& why you won’t kiss them by the dumpster.

I’ve got it hard out here, lady.

Paying for my luggage to air condition

In the Drake.

I got hard out here, mister.

No one will let me eat a sandwich in the park.

But you tell me to keep running,

To the little mountain with the tires,

To railings and handle bars and people I miss.

Sure they shake when I see them but so do their shoulders.

We laugh, staying out of graveyard of no ones.

The moon muscles in to tap my watch

And I hang up my life preserver.

Eyes slash with smiles and it not our job.

I’m one of the old, they are the jet set,

& my depot is waiting for the delivery

I want to work in a machine shop today

To prove to everyone I finally quit

Rolling my eyes at the clock boss

Or caring if I lose a finger

I wanna feel a paycheck after GoJo

The color of the paper enough

To get me home & fed & into bed

My shoes unstylish and worn

But no one trusts an old wobble

So I sit by my window and write

About how it might clear

It was hot on Winnamac

I’d been working all week

To afford beer next fall

While you brought home

My cousin without

The proper paperwork

I listened to the Sox

Fall out of a dream

As you two bickered

With the neighbors

On who’s pot

Is better today

Later all three of us

Went to heaven

During a thunderstorm

The only way to go

And forget for 20 years

You and them

Are probably why

That color of yellow

Makes me frisky still

Now a golden age of culture spectors

So smooth I fear I would want to miss it

The simplest task of making notes Utilitarian until you’re out

Draws little blood to my brain

When I think it

Instead personally I suspect

My halcyon period will go down as bronze

For we had the latex condom

And while the love wasn’t free, it was

Tightly tooled and welded

Like the last glove maker of a civil war

But a silver age of art? How I taste my own

Guillotine when the rich can figure it out

How paying it off, melting it down, lazily

Commenting “You could do better”

Seeing where a well covered sneer leads to…

“Ideally, I will have sex on a mountain this year”

I immediately attempt to round a percentage number

Of midwesterners who died with this being the only

Goal in their hearts

It seems so easy unless you ever had to feed a lover

Or never woke up to have a lean over the railing

Checking if stars are available through wildfire smoke

People are just mean to the simple

So I get waved at and locals always know I swim

That pine is possible with gulf sea foam blues

& greens

Not a speck of trash

On the street without a sidewalk

A sour face

Was all I met all night

But who can say

I still have all my fingers and toes

And it’s not my problem

If you aren’t warm come October

Once

My parents believed

Watching PBS and the nightly news

Now we just gamble on who got hit by a truck

Jumping out of the headlights

I’m confused

On how tomorrow could be worse

On how I could think

There wouldn’t be any more parties