poetics
after eileen tabios

looking like a dope waiting for the light to change
after dark on k st all lit up like x-mas
everyone too lit up like it was friday night
looking like a dope me and my backpack
among the crowd there is one motherfucker
who stands so close to me we could be lovers
dude stank like chemicals
all lit up standing so close i think he's going for my pack

sure enough when the light changed i trot off
sling off my pack and see it's been opened
a bit and i reach in for a feel
nothing missing nothing the motherfucker
would think is worth much i gather

unless there's a black market in an empty lunch container
a book of poems and a moleskin heavily annotated
with drafts and notes for poems in a script
that appears for all the world like the handwriting
of someone suffering a psychotic trip