Mured Up In the Wall of Wisdom

Politics is
the main reason behind
everything which is why the Salivating
Army dares to call
this chicken-wire cage a shelter
and these plastic
mats beds that they got for free when
Little Angels Day Scare went
bankrupt
and why they won't put up
any showers just
a cold-water sink and commode because the woman 
that owns Don's Discount Drugs
made a speech
before the County Commissioners
that if you add on
showers your undesirables will start drifting
in from
all over not only the ones in need
but assholes that will take baths just to spite
the incumbent
Sheriff and the resident Hanging Judge
who abhor clean
bums even worse than dirty ones so what you get
if you join the army now is used GI Nikes
and Calvin Kleins
to cover your scodey body and surplus
commodity grits and powdered milk and scrambled
eggs poured
from a carton which you have to sop up and
bolt down before they clear
the table for the Major's reveille sermon which
is usually about how even
the worst of us can lift ourselves up
by our Nike-
straps
and get out and do something useful like fold
ads for the Tribune or like our lady
                                      Vietnamese
instructor from UNC said last week keep a journal or write
poems
that will let the heartless middle class perceive
what they are wasting by turning their backs
on all this
talent which could maybe even include
a Capote or a Richard Wright but not the likes
of me 
that she won't let come to her seminary any more
because all he wants to do
is submit 500 wd
                       essays about jacking
off or like the time he found a dead weirdo
sitting in the urinal
of the first-floor men's room at the courthouse
and drank
what was left of the delecti's Thunderbird before
he prised open
the unfortunate's jaws and fucked him
                                    in the throat
which was my
symbolic way of writing that yes we street
folk do 
entertain thoughts
of sex just like the normal people in the world
and like I told the professor in a PS hey
I realize
this is a piss-poor story but if I could maybe
enroll in a regular class
at the university and take my rightful place
amid all that sweet
                       pussy
I might could learn
to be more sociable and not have to forever
be doing everything
for myself like Alexander in his tent
or Montaigne in his tower or Saint Theresa
                                    in her wild
lament

James Lineberger