‘twas sandy blonde brown grayish mishmash
not menacing or authoritative
more like a skid row on my third bottle of wine today
fashion - if you could call it that
not sagely like a chinese master’s
quoting Confucius or Tao Te Ching passages
just stringy and unshapely no matter how I tried
to groom it, broom it, shape it
so fuck it
now it’s more gray
like an old salt’s beard
off the ship and onto the docks
it looks right
not one of those snobby uptight ones
Professor Snob I’m not -
- eggheads that live in a textbook
or in books of poetry written by long dead poets
who nobody reads anymore
and their books are musty smelling
the pages are crumbling; the book’s spine
is broken and has arthritis
you find them on a Saturday morning
at an outdoor library sale in Georgia
in a beat-up cardboard box for 50 cents
and they are overpriced at that
but you buy one thinking you might
get SOMETHING out of it
so you take it down to a bench by the lighthouse
by the rocks and water
and with open mind peruse through it
but after a while you give up on it
tossing it into a trash receptacle
that’s ready and waiting for your deposit
