I knew this woman once, and I got her alone.

She asked me who the real Leo was, so I told her I was a poet. She said something like, "Aw. That's cute."

I looked into her eyes.
I looked into her eyes and saw that her poetry was the vain pursuit of a lost americana. Her poetry lived where could-be cartographers coddled their craft in closed-minded communes.

So I took it upon myself.
I took it upon myself to explain.

I said, "My poetry is when you find the dreams that your television set sold you -- while you're chained to a hospital bed on life support."

I said, "My poetry is when you're starving on the side of the road and a stranger gives you a sandwich -- only to die of malnourishment later because the sandwich was hardly enough to feed your tapeworms."

I said, "My poetry is when you find Jesus Christ -- while you're lying face down in a ditch in your hometown because you just couldn't make it out of that place alive."

She said something like, "I need to go. I forgot I had a thing."

I know that I haven't seen you since, but I want you to know that sometimes I pray, and when I pray I petition your god too keep you from finding my poems.