Sometimes a poem beseeches me

Like a dog outside a Greek taverna—

I’m not kidding—she was real—

One eyed, limping,

Fighting to stay on her feet.

**

Huck Finn and Ishmael—the two most trust worthy narrators

In American fiction…the rest want something from you.

**

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”

—George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

Something tells me I’ve given up on both…

**

Of course I want to be loved and understood

But this is the lobster trap we call America baby….

**

My father’s first job was to shovel snow off the railroad tracks.

He used to find bloody human teeth…

**

D.H. Lawrence coughed out his heart.