Dilworth, old man, back-alley beatnik
Dirty-grey knotted-longhair
Thick eyebrowed comic
Groucho's gentile twin
Yellow-striped red underwear
A peace sign on your ass
Manhattan's finest trash-picker
Poking through cans with a butterfly net
I miss your stuttered sentences
Between the words all syllables in place
I miss your swollen stories
Aristocratic fore-bearers in drug-plagued towns
Of junk and steel
Sentimental weaving of dog-dung lyrics
Published by the Black Coffee Press
I miss the five floor walk-up
The stairway thickened with tenement odors
Parsley, sage, cat urine, and thyme
Each floor a beacon for the blind
I miss your mission hang-out
At night by the kerosene lamp
Side stepping shadows of lost runaways
A Harlem hardened honey hiding in your room
Her dad a transit cop - banging on the door
I miss our cockroached early mornings
Sitting by the table, the sun beneath our seats
A spoon of fresh coffee
Filtered through yesterday's grinds.
Woody
Pine, Copyright 2002