Poem 3

 

THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

     the kindness of strangers is living on luck,
          and conduct survives on touch,
     cunning linguist making love into paper,
clumps of ink cling to trysts with pin-up dumb waiters,
full frontal flavor,
     crumbs of favors for savory rum chasers,
               jump to later --->
          they now play breakbeats on Haight St.,
     gettin scummy faced sayin 'word',
sunbathers roll in graves takin the heat,
     I'm from a glacier which makes for frozen nerve endings,
sensing a tempting rendering of what my friends think,
               I blame others mostly,
this obsessive rationalizing's how I go to sleep,
     and it's been a whole week, nosy,
          rosy cheeks and delicate disposition,
               or so it seems,
who knows what I mean when you don't agree,
     "can I teach you to wink?"
     now THAT'S POETRY!
     what am I smoking?
          No need to answer that,
phrases like 'contagious cancer' and 'crack',
the former being the accepted slang word for supressed anger,
     'crack' meaning addiction,
skippin class and gettin smashed,
motherfuck trying to fit in!
     for two days I ate nothing but
     books and water, storytellers,
story maker's smoke signals of
     poem and gas from the front steps of the court house –

© SOB, sometime in 2000

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