how is it that you can always just be so
you all the time, never let those little
glimpses of self doubt and terror leak through.
how can you be so comfortable in your yellow feet
your stained sweatshirt, your hair in corn-husk tufts
all about your face. your baby fuzz beard unshaved, barely there
as though you are sexless, ageless and unprocessed.
how is it that you make a cell phone look necessary for a kerouac
a chewed up clove of garlic seem practical?
how is it that your nudity has never been impolite
or shocking, falling into water, your penis inoffensive in flight.
how can it be that your gas and bodily functions are somehow more
archaic, more defined or holy or sacred? that everything
you do is for living, that you function on the fuel
of your foodstamp card and never stop moving?
that you call your mother between highways,
have a permanently bent hitcher's thumb,
never pack more than one pair of pants--
cut the legs off in the summer when you need shorts.
that you wash your clothes in faucet water and
still use hand-written letters as your most frequent form of
"hi, i miss you."
i hate how necessary you are to my affluence,
how jealous i am of your vagabond syndrome,
how handsome i thought you once were,
and the fact that i can't remember what you looked like
while we were making love.

05/27/2008

Posted on 05/27/2008
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