sunday afternoon in a sandusky ice cream shop


i stand outside of
myself shaking in the
summer sun there are
things yet to do

moments left to pause
and think about
how if i was
frank o'hara this would
be the exact right
moment in my life to write a
list poem except i'm
not and i can't
ever seem to remember
an exact right time
for anything

so i think about
the old man who was
evicted from my apartment
building on 12th & spruce
after 38yrs to make
way for college students like me

i remember how he
liked to wear a
polyester jacket every day
no matter how hot
it got to be
outside and how the
last time i saw him
he seemed to be riding an
elevator with no real destination

i wear jackets too
made from leather
made from cotton
made from words & flesh
hung together with boyhood dreams
of suicide as if they
were a second skin
but i'm not the
red baron these hands
are not a sanctuary
and i can't really
say what direction our
dreams might take so
play it as it lays

i stand there thinking
about how melted ice cream
is a good representation
of our potential and how
that old man once
called me a spider
twice removed from miracles and how
this is as good
a time as any
to tell you that
it is august and
that my hands shaking

i want to make
a list of flesh & blood & poems

i want to throw
scrapes of this moment
to the wolves in heaven

hungry for words

whatever their final destination


John Dorsey