Morning With Crackheads

There were about a half dozen in the alley -
behind the rented room where I lived.
Their knock-knees spread wide 
as they slumped against a concrete wall -
heads down on forearms - despairing.

When I passed the window on my way to piss -
I looked out to see them all gone as if they'd
been scattered by a diffuse spray of Raid.

In minutes they're back like homing pigeons.
Then starts the unintelligible screaming.
A little later more - the intelligible screaming.
Threats. Epithets. The kicking over -
of an overloaded red plastic shopping cart.
They can't bear their withdrawals.
They can't bear their humiliation.
They hate the lies they tell themselves.

So they scream.

Open up their gap-toothed mouths - and scream.

Cheers to You Bob

Not a watcher of movies or television -
I did not raise my glass in toast to the passing
of Gene Hackman.

My sympathies are with those who did -
raise their glass that is -
for the fond entertainment he brought them.

More than three decades ago -
the old man in the room next to mine -
paid for my car's new battery.

Knowing I was broke - he took pity.
It enabled me to get to my shit job on time -
the next day and in the weeks to come.

In hospice care over a decade ago he died.
No funeral arrangements were made.
No memorial service with fond recollections.

So tonight - as the world toasts a departed VIP -
I raise my glass to you Robert Lee Plummer -
an unknown whose good deeds went unseen.

You would shake your head in bemusement -
seeing me here on the verge of sixty -
just as pitiably broke as I was at thirty.

Reading in a Thrift Shop Chair

Billy Collins swaying in a hammock -
Penguin Book of French Verse above his face.
Says he does not know if he is a man of leisure -
perhaps because all men in his world are men of leisure.

I sit in a metal folding chair bought in a thrift shop -
Cormac McCarthy's Child of God splayed on tabletop.
A sip of Ten High - a gulp of Hamms - a wince.
Six hours until I have to be at the loading dock.

Not sure of my envy - I would not like Billy's life.
Sure - I want my books to sell - but to readers.
The libraries - journals - and fellow academics -
all ensure sufficient royalties for Billy's life of leisure.

Perhaps he's a martyr to idleness -
sentenced to gently sway until dead in his hammock.
With knotted feet and twisted spine I'll load freight -
tending to the word as best I can - write a line here -
a verse there - sentenced to die in anonymity.