Bare bones in colloquialisms,

these poems.

They bound in and out like
the sounds of songs in passing cars
harsh and snapping and then gone.

There are no stories here,
only epitaphs.

Fishing Hole

fishing for cans and bottles in a
trash can by the door of the mini mart.
The trash can, green with small
black wheels in the back, brims
with paper bags and Styrofoam
cups, flyers and broken down cardboard
boxes, cigarette packs and the hope for
a couple dimes worth of glass or plastic.
Fishing for hope, his hand comes across lotto
scratch offs, played and thrown away—.
He sits on the concrete lump that
keeps cars from coming too close to
the wall, and looks through the three
cards, crumpled by another’s disappointment—
looks through their metallic sheens,
their promises of green and red—
promises already proved lies.
He leans back against the trash
can, upsetting one of his bags of bottles:
today’s catch.
His tan coat is tattered from elbows to
cuffs, its white stuffing hanging slack
out of the tears around his wrist as he
peers at the figures and numerals and
proves the promises lies to himself before
replacing them in the Rubbermaid green
trash can, gathering his bags and walking
to the next fishing hole.

sitting on a cardboard box

sitting on a cardboard box under a bridge in the city,

Dallas in the rain, reflected green, never seemed so pretty

grimy,

 and hard.

Street lights and brakes, blinkers and neon

blur in my vision,

as i am surrounded in the sounds of the city

muted by drizzle:

wet tires approaching and receding

like an urban tide, 
the sirens in the distance lifted

by the wind to drift under the bridge

and mix with the chatter of the old troll

whose party i've crashed.

LeRoy speaks to me slowly,
tells me tales of years past

glory days lived fast and half fabricated.

memories of playing music in juke joints that never existed

memories of women who vanished like mist in the sun,

slowly faded.

His calloused hands hang limp off his knees

except when he points a gritted finger at the city

or when he takes the wine from me.

He lifts it through the wiry brush of hair around his lips

and tilts his bald head back to drink

before passing the bottle back to me.

Sucking the air in between his few pomegranate seed teeth,

LeRoy, the troll, continues to speak.

"Shit, son," he turns his eyes to mine,

"i know you ain't believe half of my life.

"You think i'm liein'."

I laugh, put the bottle down
and pull out a sack of grass
and an orange pack of zig zags.

He smiles, unleashing enough reason for five DDM suicides.
We sit in silence as we finish the weed,

then i get up and give him the end of the pluck,

the last of my wine.

His grunt suffices for both thanks and goodbye

as i walk out from under the over pass

and out into under the sky.

Coyote-Under-Arclight

He glows over shadow
from an arc light just above—
abuzz.
His eyes are black holes, and whether windows
on the soul
(like the man said)
I don’t know,
but what he is
well, I think I can venture a guess
low slung pants,
leaning on a streetlight
in a down vest—
yes, slick trickery personified.

Let’s call him Coyote-
waiting.
So— Coyote-waiting-under-the-arclight
stands—waiting—under the arclight,
salty—doggin the ground in front
of his feet as he flicks his bic
shhhhhick its sparks, negligence.
Coyote-waiting-under-the-arclight
glows over shadows
brightly shines over stark darkness
as he
slinks slowly ‘round ‘tween
the streetlight and chain link fence
stalking—but knowing his game is so tight, it’s a sin.
He doesn’t need to chase his prey, they
will come to him.

Strap-Hanger

He rambles, mumbling, standing,
a hand in a fingerless knit glove grasping hold
of a bus seat or really one of the metal poles
that come up from the seats at the corner.
His long frayed coat sways against the sway
of the bus, billowing the sullied stench away
from his body and toward the rest of us.
He looks like he would be unsteady at the best
of times, and every time the bus comes to rest
creaking, as its brakes grind, he stumbles
into the people around him. honestly, if it wasn’t easy
to see how sloppy he is, they would probably believe
he was picking their pockets.

He has eyes that can only have ever been called
beady, and if his beard and brows were any bushier
he couldn’t be said to have any eyes at all.
The hair on his face must have been grown
as an attempt to compensate for the hair
that was on his head but decided on its own
it was time to evacuate. The hair he has left
is grown long around the bald scalp,
making him resemble an ascetic monk, which
he may be. I haven’t ruled it out.

He rambles, mumbling, sitting,
his fingers fiddling with the frayed end of his coat
sleeve.

Cartouche

Let's write our name in the cement

when the hard hats call it a night.

Find a stick or some re-bar, 

somethin’ strong enough

to get in the concrete as it dries

and leave our cartouche 
engraved in stone, 

out eternal names

on Jefferson and LaBrea.

Unwanted Populations

Twisted—
the bone gristle exposed
through holes in the skull
which is cracked and has
crusted with blood that
dried on her scalp—
she is wrapped in old
blankets and newspapers
by the dumpster in the alley,
under sloppy tags, her
cocoon untouched except
by rats and roaches and
the eggs that will hatch
to maggots that will eat her
dead flesh.
It reminds me of pictures
I’ve seen of the Sioux at
Wounded Knee—
frozen in the snow.