slurs the woman in her cups
when I tell her I write poems
late in the lonely evening.

She waves at the air conditioner
that mulches silence to hum lull,
"it's all just chemicals, physics,

actions and reactions, man."
Hard to argue with logic birthed
betwixt brain and frothing marrow

of glassy pint, so I tell her sure, ok,
& move the subject back to her son
who snaps time-lapse photos of ice

abandoning the toes of hills.
Still, her self-certainty rankles:
when I leave I pause and gaze up

at the sprinkled smears wetted
flat across the matte night melt,
any of which might be pouring

purring stanzas from radio teeth,
long-wave nigh-black rhymes
if we had ear enough to listen.

I heave homeward on clock feet,
blackbirds gashing the fog hedge,
as raw verse gnaws my thought.

when you trim your ***** and your mustache with the same pair of scissors
when you hand over your entire paycheck to the bartender of doom and glee
when you write a bounced check at the grocery store
when you sleep with a girl who isn’t clean
when you’re young, lost, broken and poor
when your childhood runs hard and your luck runs out
when your best friend is dead and your other friend is ******* your girl
when your dog sleeps in the afternoon and dreams of the neighborhood *****
when your nutrients gets replaced with Xanax bars over the one who just left
when your tired eyes meet the brick & mortar of strenuous labor
when the smile is so fake that it appears genuine
when you go all in on someone you weren’t 100% sure of
when you wait on bleeding knees for the unreliable god
when you bet on the boxer that crashed to the canvas
when the interest is high and the banks are closed and the creditors don’t care about grace periods
when you understand very little and you expel a whole lot
when the cord of anxiety strangles your very essence
when you turn out to be just as everyone expected

don’t worry

it’ll all turn around

and find you again

someway

somehow.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Arthur Benjamin Franklin: my Unca Artie, my favorite. A High School football star, known as Red Franklin, he was famous for his dark red hair.  He used to chuck me into deep water at Chrystal Pool to terrify me for 5 seconds, then hoist me onto his broad shoulders.I suspect I was his favorite too.  War came and he had to go.  I cried and cried on the herringbone patterned bricks at the train depot in Kelso. I have a v-mail he sent to my mom, his sister, dated 1942.  He was a belly gunner on the B-17’s that  were flying the area where Rommel was fighting.  He brought my sis and I back little leather suitcases, tooled in wonderful designs by a skilled artist somewhere in the orient. I still have it.  A treasure.

Grover Cleveland Franklin: My suave uncle, joined the Navy in WWII and became a deep sea diver. The kind that wore those heavy suits with the big glass bubble head.  He helped detect and destroy mines around battleships.  In doing that brave work he lost his hearing and came home as a lip reader for most of my childhood. I was always  a bit suspicious because he seemed to read lips so well. He even got written up in the newspaper because he could sing while putting his hands on a phonograph and feeling the vibrations of the music he couldn’t hear. We kids would always try to make loud noise behind him but he never once reacted to it.
Many years later I learned that he confessed that his hearing had gradually came back.  He was a hero nevertheless.

About their names: Both being born in North Carolina, back in the 1920’s it was common practice among the country folk to name sons after famous people.  I also have another distant relative named George Washington Franklin. I love having hillbilly DNA.