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three handfuls of paunch,
you've been fired from a job
lived with women
married to women
you no longer suck in that gut
when they come around,
another man's fists have beaten you down in the snow
you've beaten down another man in front of a flagpole
you avoid that game,
you've buried a loved one
cut the umbilical chord of your first born child
you've seen the sun go up
the sun go down
you hope for neither,
smirk of cholera
grace of bow-legged sage
you walk through strip-clubs
and sixteen car pileups
equally.
pretty sure
i left my notebook
at work:
brand new notebook
canary yellow
college ruled
bought at wal-mart
on the way into work
last night:
pretty damn sure
i left it
wide open
right there
under the computer keyboard
on the work release control desk:
the computer keyboard
on the work release control desk
everybody uses:
it was a circus last night:
two escapes
three guys came back from work
drunk as tokyo-joe:
a real kafka petting zoo last night
i only had time to write two poems:
pretty sure
the left page
is a short chop-job
about one of my female coworkers
having a face
like a razor blade
and sixteen bags of chocolate chips
hidden in her thighs:
pretty sure
the right page
is flat prose
about how i routinely
piss in the bathroom sink
instead of the toilet.
fuck,
now that i give it
consideration of the elephant
pretty sure i scribbled some shit
in the margins of those two pages
as well:
quite certain
i wrote a haiku
about my boss
being a styrofoam hammer
and a little confessional
about the generic bottle of listerine
and the name brand bottle of vodka
out in my glove compartment
i routinely visit
during copious grounds checks
clockwork
every thirty minutes
throughout the night.
has pictures
of a dead
blond haired woman
stuck in his head.
if you can
believe it
he's weeping
in his
soup.
this might do
more harm
than good,
i say
sliding him
my flask.
why you here
on christmas?
he asks
tipping it
vertical.
i don't know
honest to god
i don't know,
i say
pulling us a
fresh one
from my
backpack.
Justin Hyde lives in Iowa where he works with criminals. He has a Web page at http://www.nyqpoets.net/poet/justinhyde. He can be contacted here: jjjjhyde@yahoo.com jjjjhyde@yahoo.com.