Brandon Shane | Happy Poets

I opened the bedroom door, he was gone
and there was no veneer of business trips
work had fired me and I had fired work,
I arrived at the porch already seeing trucks
filled with men in perfect hierarchies
even if they thought themselves equal,
chewing on red apples, tobacco sticks,
I prepared to live on the streets
thinking I could sell poems for five dollars
write them on the spot
the only way to make money in this business
is to be a circus clown anyways
a patsy on podiums talking to the world
like we know something true
and they believe us, poets, poets,
about history and on-going civilization,
I want to tell them
stop listening you fools, but
they were going to listen to fools anyway,
and I would rather a fool be able
to write a good poem every now and then,
bad relationships write poems for you
the worse the man or woman
the more verses bleed from your wounds
sometimes you get infected and
maybe even croak, but that’s poetry too,
I spend my days looking at hotel walls
from back-alleys, happy as ever
hearing fog horns and cockroach claws,
unable to find all the value
added by the ocean,
the ships here will tell you, all that matters
is who has purchased what,
and the wise men know when they walk
into a room, if they have been purchased
and for how long,
but I’m happy, I’m happy, sunflowers
and a red wagon full of juniper,
love is real and it’s a ruse
and love is everything,
we share that together, me and him,
me and you, the illnesses
that plant roses on recent memory,
the learned man knows
I and us are equally apart,
luck paints a canvas.

BRANDON SHANE is a poet and horticulturist, born in Yokosuka, Japan. You can see his work in trampset, The Chiron Review, IceFloe Press, The Argyle Literary Magazine, Berlin Literary Review, Acropolis Journal, Grim & Gilded, The Coalition, Dark Winter Lit, among others. He graduated from Cal State Long Beach with a degree in English. Find him on Twitter @Ruishanewrites