EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE

You have the right to lose everything.

Look at my shoes.

I am not telepathic.

I don’t pass out Viagra to the troops.

The fox

Sits like Buddha

Across the alley

From a meth lab.

Every once in a while

You run out of film.

That’s when the greats

Do their best.

“How you gonna get around in all that smog?”

Friends in Hong Kong ask.

Spring lightning divides the air.

My scenes are as empty as space.

You never know

If someone’s

Gonna pull a Claude Rains

Because it doesn’t happen

That you see them clearly

Until the end of the film.

Not a few wrong bets are made.

I make no apologies for my poems, myself.

There’s nothing else.

The sun

Climbed up the window

And lit up your eyes.

5 June 2011

Spoken word version from Commune, copyright © 2013 by Jim Cohn.