A Poem on Youth

fragile like a beaker
bored like a blade of grass

the summer is not so far away
in milk stained bowls
the wallowing of stinking sinks
rumbles with tectonic shifts
plates crackling
beneath broken toenails

I want to give thanks
thanks for this job I spend too much time at
for the dreams I’ve watched in the windows of my eyes fade into the distance
for poetry, like a lover that’s slighted me
for William Burroughs
and the ideas that nothing is worth a lick because we’ll all be dead

In the boulevards of Hollywood the crown weighs heavy
wealth is the language of love and adoration
multiplying children
scatter over granite sidewalks
unaware of their parents broken marriage
and the ideals of a whole country crumbles

I miss the rivers of my youth
The Hudson and Harlem River
The Mississippi
the peacefulness of water, cool
breezes cutting splinters down the spine

supine memories
undone by adulthood
coming to on the shoulder of some freeway
wearing coffee stained clothes
and water filling green eyes
unsure of the future
and attached to history

fragile like a glass spine
bored like a redwood.