willamette

i am 'heart'sick
and cuntsore
of talking about love
so let's look
at what's surrounding
the 'finery'
bearded men on the buses scraggling trash bags
of empties behind them,
leaking
beer in incontinent dribbles.
the college-educated
or[myentiregeneration]
working some deadman job
with holes
in their shoes& knees
of their pants patched
with scraps -
i mean, contrary
to popular belief, this ain't quite
no fashion statement
it's called poverty

around us our neighborhood sports 'storewideclearanceclosing'
signs, yes
and this is what's left
for us.

at the mall a delicious pen shop
houses a man who works
in three-piece suits&
looks like Sinatra did, forty
years ago,
and he remembers my name
every time
i'm by.
i wonder what he is thinking in
that deserted shopfront&if
there's anyone
for him to go home to.
i want to ask him out for drinks sometime, but
maybe that would be creepy,
coming from me, or maybe
desperately lonely, which
i am
and when i smile at strangers on the street,
it's because i'm wishing i
could make some sort of connection with anything,
even

the bums that root through garbage buckets
for bottles or cans with a 5cent
deposit
and i would wonder about where
they go, but
i already know
they huddle neatly in sleeping bags
on burnside
all along its accompanying bridge,
squatting out a life
suspended
over a river