Probation 5-7-18

Who will show first today,

besides me of course?

Who will implode?

Who will wither with grace

or squirm?

Who has disappeared?

Who suffered a tracheotomy

to breathe foul justice?

 

The sweatband man skates up!

Cigarette dangling,

black slacks,

black knee pads,

black loafers,

black satin jacket,

gray hair pulled in a ponytail.

The ponytail blows

like a flag,

gray against the gray sky.

Dude has style,

a style keeping him alive.

 

I’ve decided to sit by the Coke Machine.

It feels full of life. I say hello.

No Walt Whitman in here anymore.

I bulked up on him.

I read a historian who wrote

that Walt supported

the invasion of Mexico in 1848.

He probably did,

the Manifest Destiny and all.

He was ahead of his time,

but not then.

It was soon to come

in Leaves of Grass

when he invaded

American poetry

and took a scythe

to the tall rigid meters,

and cut loose liberation.

Can a poet still do that?

 

Rigs roll up in the parking lot,

another skateboard, too.

A dog is vaping.

A woman is crying.

A gull drops a shit on the heather.

It will be on soon,

and I won’t believe

what I see and hear,

until I do.