Poor Me (always working)

Ideas, yes, but working poems built on thoughts like these
often lead to revelations, meant to enlighten, not to please

(c'mon, dude, of course your sucking loneliness wants acknowledgement.
"not to please", ha! but still to churn, not to enter the establishment,
to help to realize the source of missing clatter
sifting through our poor brain, reflecting sleepless chatter
reflecting innocence but just the same
depth perceived from what I acknowledge is a shallow shame.
Poor me. They, they, the others always over-gifted by we, have got it all
and, now, poor me, I haven't -- or have I? -- yet collected attention -- here I am, after all --
that I, poor me, have to bear and bear and get nothing back
but words, attacks, seeming endless empty hangers on a rack.)

Downtown

I sit in the shade at a dark counter behind the glass,
eating my biscotti, sipping the dark, French roast
while drinking in the morning's entertainment out on the street.

Passersby are downtowners or touring or both;
some smoking on break or waiting for the play to begin
or beginning to play sidewalk music for sympathy or fee;
or sitting cross-legged with homeless sign and jar or not.
Walkers on a phone or and/or purple hair, tight braids,
cornrows, shaved mohawk or just brushed straight up,
low-hanging jeans falling off or threatening,
maybe a tie and skinny suit, pant or skirted,
crawling about with the crew at noon.

Baseball hats cocked on sideways, always more interesting
than backwards, cover inquisitive minds, bent on friends or girls
or hatless, just bent to laugh and explore, like me.

Here come the tie-less, open collared
point-shiny brown-shod or too-spike heeled,
conference-necklaced laughs and wondering
I suppose, like me, where desire will lead tonight.

RORRIM

He looks back at me,
reflects my order
to stop smiling and
not to stop because of him.
He asks to try a frown, to look into his eyes,
to wonder whether he is just the man he wants to be.
A movement here, ... and there, his eyes become
unresistable and wonder spreads from there.
Is this a simple morning or is it unbecome --
to see this wonder being whose attraction resists no one?