Some people just see the world differently.

It’s possible that it will never get any better
than being able to live like that.
Long after you’ve grown your hair down to your feet,
and purchased hundreds of empty gas cans
to fill your empty-hearted home.

His parents passed away last year,
and he spent the following week
filling mailboxes with garbage bags
full of homemade arrows.

Dad loved to smoke cigars, he said,
and then he wrote something
over the older writing in the palm of his hand.

The neighbors liked him more
when he was just a weird little kid.

This is a dangerous city.
The oldest conman on record is thirty-two,
and he’s even more cynical,
than a babysitter who knows her cheerleader outfit
can pay for community college.

This town is a fool. It looks and acts like an old man,
who waits a hundred years to finally paint a self-portrait,
and then dies,
just as he’s finally getting his hands dirty.

He doesn’t seem to notice any of that.
He doesn’t even seem to think he’s in a city.

Horsemen could be coming from every direction.
His damsels in distress probably number in the thousands,
and can take care of themselves just fine.

The traffic miraculously doesn’t care
if he lives, dies or gets a job playing Russian Roulette
with the Rottweiler’s who follow him everywhere.

He’s never made a wrong step. He’s never had to find
birthday candles in an emergency room.

A very particular type of woman tries to save him
with prayer circles,
foreign languages,
lap dances and baked goods,
but he’s never paying attention.

His brother is a nervous millionaire.
He pays big fellas to work his sibling over,
with stale chocolate brass knuckles
wrapped in gold paper,
and then leave sandwiches at his feet.

Some clearly envy his lifestyle,
but no one would ever admit it sober,
and only sober people are as honest as weary judges.

Lightning as big as San Francisco
probably moves aside anything that gets in his way.

The six o’clock evening train might well exist,
arrive at five or four a.m.,
and make the scene like a backwards-talking
children’s entertainer.

He’s never cried. At least,
never in public.

He hugs the Jesus freaks,
who don’t wipe the blood off their huge signs.
That’s not some kind of commentary
on his part about religion. He might just be a nice guy.

It’s hard to tell.
Asking him is kind of like expecting birthday money
from dead relatives.

That bastard probably gets those cards by the dozens.

10/20/2011

Author's Note: ages and ages ago i wrote something about an orphan kid, who lived alone in an attic and got along just fine. i guess this could be a sequel to that, although i'm pretty sure i've written a few hundred poems about people like this already.

Posted on 10/20/2011
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