Twenty Years

Portland poem.

Weird sadness, I’m on the cusp of crying

Sheer madness, in the dusk I’m dying

I sigh and drink the old corked wine of dusty cellars

I try to rework my mind’s path with fortune tellers.

And I walk myself down these filthy grit streets

Too broke to sigh and lay me down in pristine sheets.

I keep running from voices spitting rounds inside my head

Til I find churning despair, credit cards, and rotten dread.

I saw a homeless man at the back of a cafe line

In a woman’s hat shouting human extinction’s soon,

The police showed up and they slapped him with a fine

He laughed and told them “ignorance is our cocoon.”

He is more myself than I.

Where will I be in twenty years, an alleyway or grave?

How long can I deny I am my mind’s forgotten slave?