Probation Poem 9-25-17

Men in the waiting room

speak of addiction.

One wears the uniform

of a road flagger.

 

He shoots a text

to a treatment center

on the last Blackberry

in America.

Rain falls outside.

Give me 40 days

and 40 nights of

Bladerunner rain.

Give me Noah meets Deckard

and let us all drown

and start over

with replicants in Congress.

 

I hear an insane man

beyond the door.

I’ve sat in a room

with his insanity.

It caromed like an object in a cartoon.

Euthanasia crossed my mind.

But not for myself.

 

Why do I write

poems in here?

They clash with the

coke machine and gray carpet.

I should stop reading Whitman in here.

He’s clouding my vision

with his hallucinations of democracy.

 

I am no poet

with these probation poems.

Read this non-poem

for corroboration.

Corroboration is a terrible

word for poetry.

(Carom isn’t bad.)

At least I know that.

 

A sign on the wall

says the seafood plant is hiring.

ASAP!/ $11 an hour.

 

The local seafood industry

dies without this office.

They cast their nets

in the parking lots.

I’ve seen it.

Casting from a truck,

not a boat.

Fishers for marginalized men.

Fishers not taught by Jesus.

 

I’ve seen so much here,

none of it poetry.

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