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I'm walking down strander blvd.
when I here a guy
yelling from the roof top
I can't understand him much
a few minutes pass
then I see him running
toward me with a knife
yelling "got me from rabbits, I'm mount lost"
and a brother on the corner shouts
"Fuck dat Nigga in Da White Hat"
and he's pointing to the
guy running towards me
only the guy is white and
his hat is blue
then a cop pulls up
throws an old book out the window
of his car
and drives off
the crazy guy with the knife
drops the knife
picks up the book
and the brother on the corner yells
"Fuck dat Nigga in Da White Hat!"
but now
the brother is pointing to a old lady
carrying a baby in a cross walk
the roof top blue hat guy puts the
book down the front of his pants
crosses the street calmly
and goes into
MacDonald's
nobody seems puzzled
i understand nothing
except maybe
solitude
drunkenness
and loneliness
that looking
an angry man in the eyes
makes him more angry
that the factory men are
always
better company
i am hardly real
and
there is no roof over
the mountains
and the babies swimming in the junkies' bellies
will be the ones I drink with or fight with in the future
and what will determine whether we drink or fight
is the length of time we have been drinking
and if we have come to term with the terms
and after we fight we'll nod at each other's eyes
and drink again
we'll toast and the glasses will break
and we will drink the wine
and the glass
and we'll toast again
and our insides will bleed out
you see, it is like this, we understand it
not only do you not like us,
we do not like one another
we do not respect our mothers
we despise or fathers
we spit on our brothers
and impregnate our cousins
and we will continue in this circle
as we have no choice but to continue
and the baby swimming in my junkie cousin's belly
will be the one I drink and fight with in the future
and what will determine whether we drink or fight
is the length of time we have been fighting already
Ānanda Selah Ösel lives in Seattle where he write poems, rides his bike, and consumes large quantities of cheap red wine. You can read more poems by him at www.ananda-osel.com.