poem of the day 11.02.15

man in the white robe

the man in the white robe

is crossing 59^th street

like he doesn’t have a care in the world

smoking his cigarette

you can’t even tell if he has clothing on

underneath that thing

just a white robe and flip flops

people on their way to work are staring

americans still have that impulse issue

when one of these things is not like the other

it sets their rigid little world off balance

some dude took a picture

just to make sure the shit was real

i guess the man in the white robe

will end up on some shitty facebook page or blog today

maybe he should be sucking down coffee

playing on his cell phone

looking like he wants to commit murder

before nine o’clock like the rest of us

not walking around like some soft cloth dandy

i mean thank god the cops aren’t around to see this

these days those motherfuckers don’t even need a reason

two latina girls are laughing

at the man in the white robe

they’re standing at the corner pointing and howling

making enough noise to raise the rest of brooklyn

they each have two children with them

that’s four kids if you’re doing the math

these women don’t even look twenty-five

and they have somebody pulling at them and calling them mom

so, really, i don’t know what’s so funny to them

if i was one of them i’d never laugh again

seeing a man crossing the street in a white robe

maybe he relieves the bullshit pressure

of being a mom so goddamned young

maybe he just looks like an asshole

one white robed asshole in a long line of assholes

hustling in new york for a morsel for a certain death

something to laugh at for the moment

to take away the eternal pain of existence

an anomaly on these streets for sure

passing the time until the light turns green

and this life ebbs back into its basic dull reality

this boredom going viral.