poem of the day 06.01.09

some motherfuckers

again
i’m on this train
again
we are stuck in this tunnel
only i’m trying to read larry brown
to block out the world around me
but these two black teenagers
are sitting a few seats away
and they keep yelling about something
so i can’t read
so i listen in
and the one is talking about how
these two he knows
got shot the other night
he seems excited about the story
he’s slapping his hands and shouting and laughing
he keeps getting up to show his friend
how the two must’ve staggered when they got shot
both in the arm
how one tried to run away but he got clipped
in the leg
and his friend is laughing too
because he knows them
he’s holding his mouth and stamping his feet
and making these “woop” sounds
as the train begins to move again
taking us all toward our own personal hell
and i watch these two young kids
laughing and cocking their fingers like a gun
saying “fuck death”
talking about how they’d take someone out
in a heartbeat
almost daring someone to try them
and one shouts
“fuck jail, them niggas deserved it.”
and then i think about van gogh paintings
and how museums are like prisons too
and maybe these two could become painters
or anything but the felonious morons
they seem destined to become
i begin to think maybe there’s hope somewhere
in all of this filth and flesh and violence
but then the one gets up again and cocks his fingers
bang! bang!
and the other howls and stamps his feet
the train stalls for the fourth time
and then i think
fuck them
it’s all just a big hollywood movie to them
life and death and everything in between
so i grab my book and open it again
but then i close it and stare at an ad
for storage space
featuring a beautiful blonde with dead blue eyes
that is posted up against a metal wall
thinking some motherfuckers just deserve
their six foot dirt bed
and the world is full of too many bad paintings
done by shitty artists anyway.