POEM: MAYBE YOU SAW ME

MAYBE YOU SAW ME

Maybe you saw me
the rat at the art show
strung-out greasy
addicted

probably thought I was the artist
but I wouldn't put that shit on a wall

Two suits and three dresses stare doe-eyed
bleeding care
at a frame with a hopeless girl inside
sitting on a crumbling porch
on the corner of church and Dixon

that girl's name is keesha
I gave her, her first strawberry
picked from the trash where I fed dirty dishes
into "the whale"
who's detergent burned the skin off my fingers

I bought weed from a cop there once
right on that stoop
true story

and next to that
in black and white
that's the second to third floor stairwell of Prescott apartments
one day I found a bra on those stairs
a faded purple double-d cup
and I made the piss and beer and mold
that you can't smell in that picture

I put my fist through a wall in that building
over a stripper
the wall was stuffed with newspapers
I read them later that night
this art is a camera

Shoved into a hole so dark
you'll never really see
to capture dying rats
like me