A confident, satisfied,
perfectly still man with his lover’s head
on his chest while they sleep — 
really, how many houses around here
look like that inside?  How many
truly happy beds are nearby?

Don’t ask.  You’ll tear yourself that way.

Think instead
about the moonlight 
on this night 
after the beaver moon.
Think about how
bright color inevitably 
went a little gray
under the beaver moon, 
but it’s still there.  

Think about red, and yellow,
and how they are still there. 

At me, looking.  Say, did I
muscles have, ever?
Was there anything
uneaten? Did I mother
a thing, father a thing
worth any damn?
Hardly a damn at all.
Sat me down instead and wrote
poems of fat and second hand
and not me and here we go tomorrow,
not now.

It shows.

Now, pear-man,
pale freak I am.  Rager,
sadder, so complete in some
potato sack way (empty, sag,
writing on the walls).  Open
to the lies of stardom yet
nearby, all I gotta do is
reach.  No, untold is how
reach doesn’t spell grip —
see how the cramp fingers
bend only enough to claw at,
not hold?  And I’m poor, not broke.  Broke
is today, poor is tomorrow, is all tomorrows.
Make broke often, turns to poor.  

And still, can belief
happen for anyone
who sees this?
It’s a poem gets writ,
not a plan.  It’s words, damn
them — hot little breaths all
done as all I can.  All I can,
what with no muscles and straight fingers
and no plan and all poor and all that —

You say, do something, please,
we all sick of you.  I am,
me too.  Maybe a little
more than you?  I keep
at it, do it like a job
I can’t retire away from,  
grouch water cooler or no.

Used to add value, though —
at me, look, please. 
Give me proof it meant a little more
than a pear in a mirror, fermenting,
spilling, going.