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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