My shoulder slung bag swings like a pendulum
as I climb corporate flights, no elevator for this
wild child, baby, my drum beats two steps at a time.
The soft cowhide could conceal crucial contracts,
pressing proposals, secrets by the ream,
but no, it’s only a man-purse.

A counter-culture bulges the
sides and stretches the strap loops.
Listen:

Defiantly dated, I’m never in sunlight
without my gold rim wayfarers, now tucked
safe in their hard-shell case.

A saucer shaped player and discs
in thin spine cases await release:
Psychedelic Furs float me in night clouds,
The Replacements for snarl and sneer,
and Moussorgsky to swell my beating chest.

Mr. Vonnegut, my wire-haired friend
grins goofy and gentle from his paperback.
We meet later for lunch at Dill’s.

A Marble Memo pad filled with careful blue-ink
affirmations from A Course in Miracles:
1) I am not the victim of the world I see.
2) I could see peace instead of this…
Soft-spoken brainwashes for the sanctum of
my holy cubicle.

A crackling bag of foil wrapped truffles,
an afternoon reward for having gotten that far.
Their centers soft and cool, slowly dissolve on my tongue,
the bite delayed in building climax.

Peppermints, Advil, nose-spray, Pepto-Bismol,
everything I need is here, when it all becomes too much.

Paper scrap scrawls for poems yet written,
poems that might save a world!
poems that might save me…

“Hill! Are you here to be entertained or to work?”

I should think the answer obvious.

02/05/2005

Author's Note: Neil Young once sang, �A man needs a maid,� and while this is certainly true, I must add, �A man needs a purse.� I am free...

Posted on 02/06/2005
Copyright © 2025 David Hill