jayivan

they bulldozed your hobo poems
as they bulldozed your victorian home

the wraparound porch, long-delayed,
thrust by indifferent day labor
into your fast-decayed living room,

peeled paint layered between unpaid bills graffitied with verse:
this surface they send,
this surface you fill,
a check for the future,
an unsent verse
from the bank of forever forever.

d. dances into the room,
shawl-wrapped and singing
“i am not the dee you know,
no no i am not the dee to thee”

you send her back to the kitchen
with cold lips and warm eyes.
shawless she returns
with milky water in spotted glasses.

you search again for
stacked within,
the lost picasso,
sketched by the artist for you,
a sketch for a sketch,
in a city by the sea
where all men were artists
pride-free and giving.