Living the Dream

Riverside Louis thinks he is the hatchling of an eggy sun

“Sunnyside up!”, he says, dipping his toast

in buttery tepid spawn of a free meal and coffee.

His month old sparsely plucked chin whiskers

wriggle to catch a few drops of such sunshine

“Oh, Gawd,” this tastes like heaven,” he muffles

through smacking lips folded in on his ecstasy.

I am repulsed yet relieved

at his delight and sunlight laying like a sheer napkin

on place-matted breakfast he seldom gets.

His smile is further enhanced by toothless gumming

of something that should go down slick.

I hear him swish and hope he does not spit

the scalding coffee.

Louis inhales his breakfast and becomes jittery.

He is ready to run back to his cardboard

under the bridge, where he will drink shadows,

his face as yellow as this newly ingested yolk.

I am left with a disappeared companion

and a desire to lick his plate

to know how God tastes.

Tags: Riverside Louis by Shewolf
No Comments »

There is a woman
under the bridge
reading what Louis
has scrawled on bridge abutment:

Love, me!

Was there a comma?
Was this a sobered time when his hands
shook a little less
as he loosened his burdens
to leave this message?

Come, friend, let us go
beneath the arch of his ache
where logging trucks
rattle his bones.
Or, we can go out on to the street,
into the shelters, into broken down homes
and offer them poetry of action
where more than words will fill
grind and grovel of his dearest wish:

Love me!

She feels his bones jingle
underneath covering grace of guardianship:

She is a just a simple unidentified

woman, yes, she is
and he would love her for her sentiment,
her kind thoughts feed him hope
that sustains him one more night
and he reaches for another stone
to write:

Love, you!

Was there a comma in that:  A pause
when he felt care swoosh over him
like a warm spring breeze?  A stir
of Universal care has him rise
to the nurturing ephemeral ecstasy
of knowing there is something more
in this visitation that feels more like love
than that which he gulps as an alternate.

He’d love that.

Tags: Riverside Louis by Shewolf
No Comments »

When he was walking through springy moss,
it was easy to sneak up on what he thought was rabbit warren,
wrap his woven weed loop around Easter mouth
and trail long rope over to bushes
that held him stick thin as their branches
while he waited for morning’s run.

In a flurry of child-like screams, his mangy meal
found itself lasso’d limply over rock altar
of patchy fire pit, spitting lambish fat
at feeble fire that flared hungrily
as buck fed it.  Air was cut by smacking
lips and leaps of snapping cottonwood.

Fork of branch held its gutted body shrinking
to tough brown meat until bones, soft enough to crack
with chipped teeth, pushed flesh away.

Riverside Louis would feast, wiping
dry blood and leftover juices onto fur
flung far enough away that Cavy
could not change its mind and jump back into it.

Louis would eat until he lost thumping
in pit of his stomach to hold him over
until midnight mass for another offering.
He would harbor a heat until he could wash
this crucified celebration down with wicked wine.

Tags: Poems, Riverside Louis by Shewolf
No Comments »

Moon’s reflection off a circling jackfish,
scales sending coded messages to the moon,
as she responds to curve caution of soft lisps
in waves wanting to know Riverside Louis

Louis is a pond of muddle, a leaking dam of ideas
that so many miss in moonlight messes
he makes of himself. 

How easy to miss reflection of stars in his sobriety.
He is a little man in harsh daylight and last drop undrunk.
He is big on ways of a warped world
that left him uncorked for fifty decades.

“Hey, lady, lookit ,” he says, wading
in up to his waist, “I am in the sky!”

Lord, but he was.  Still darkness left no lighted wedge
between air and channel’s mucky bed.

I wanted to join him but what would they say;
those people with poison weighing down
their steady sober steps so they could never slip
out under pinned up stars dancing in water with Louis?

I dream of walking down gut-slippery banks
so Grandfather might know feel of me, by skin slide
against my legs.  I have missed my chance with him.

Tags: Poems, Riverside Louis by Shewolf
No Comments »

Riverside Louis was fluid
bones wobbling, a bobble for a head,

but he saw things, in liquid Universe
most of us were too straight-walking to notice.

He spun round on one foot,
almost losing his balance
but light seemed to draw him upright
and he seemed to hear music
my ears were not attuned to.

Burden-bearer pulled down mystic’s
cheeks, and sung a frothy song
like wolf, or owl warnings
hooting as he danced,
giving  slobbery calls to star-strung night

“Dance, sister, dance”
they’ll take away our sorrows.”

In his eyes, a thousand drunken swirls
drew me in and drowned me
until nothing hurt in color.

He was no less winery in his spirit
than he was in flesh
but real words and raw moves
rolled like belly of bottle
in big blue night

and sky and I understood.

Tags: Poems, Riverside Louis by Shewolf
No Comments »