because it’s the habit of poets to put homeless people in their poems to show how supersensitive they are/ if you won’t let them into your pocketbook at least let them into your verse
I love hobos. Especially sad hobos with little sticks carrying all their worldly belongings in a handkerchief. If they have a cigar stub and big floppy shoes that is even better. But there aren't a lot of poets in this day and age who put hobos into their poems. I pick up a book at random and read, "I am not who I was or who I will be here on this street that is also a floating world that I am trying to climb" — and I throw the book across the room because what does that mean and why bother continuing? Then I look at the back cover with the author photo and bio and sob into my Wheaties.
Just once, instead of the compulsive list of publications none of us care about I'd love to see "20 to Life" and "Sing Sing" in the same sentence after a poet's name. Or "Once Blacklisted by U.S. Government for Jihad Sympathies" instead of "lives in Brooklyn with husband and child, poetry editor of the New York Times." Or "In the '70s John Shaft was a Bad Mother — shut your mouth!" But he can dig it and all the poems in the book are in jive: I's gots'ta be not who ah' wuz o' who ah' gots'ta be here on da street dat be also some floatin' wo'ld da ah' am tryin' t'climb. And the whole world says damn and keeps on reading.
I wouldn't even care if there wasn't a single hobo in the book. It would be a pleasure to read.
We drove down West Street to MLK South
(which is technically impossible but
I am lousy with directions) badmouth
at a bad wheel. But that's not a portrait,
no. Let my portrait, my snapshot, be smut
for the literate and funny. Isn't
that why you are here? to hear a somewhat
rude joke? to show you how omnipresent
I am? Now I should say something urgent
about driving, like: "OhMaGod! We Are
Going To Die!" Which isn't that pleasant,
I know, but true. Just like you, me, this car,
the sad hobo we passed at the Quik-E
Mart. All of us going in for coffee.