For Jess and Joe and Kim, Real Poetry

You will be happy to know
I found real poetry
while travelling east
on the Valleyview bridge.
Real poetry is found
in the moshpits of America,
it is there, Kim
in breath,
in first breath,
awake.

Yes Joe,
real poetry
it is in sex.
But only the chase,
not the during or after.
The chase is the religious part,
everything else is amusement.
This morning,
I found real poetry
in high cirrus clouds
that seemed barely 100 feet over
Cleveland’s Terminal Tower,
like some Margeret Bourke White photograph.
Oh Jess, if you could see it,
the city that I bitch about yet love,
if you could see the strong oaks of the metroparks
you would know there is life here
there is
real poetry
not in pain,
does pain breed art?
Shitty art, maybe.
Real poetry is bred
from life.
It grows in the gut,
not the classrooms or laboratories.
It grows and evolves
and is alive,
yes alive,
in the pit of the stomach.
Breathe it in, Pirate,
live it boy.
I found real poetry today
in the way I saw
a highway overpass
going east on I 480.
Lo! The sun is gold!
Brilliant, maginficent gold
and amber a mile ahead!
I wanted to look straight into the heart of it
and be wonderfully blind
for I would see nothing so beautiful
with my two eyes again.
I saw real life poetry.
It is in faces,
real faces,
ugly and otherwise.
In dirty fingernails I found it,
in bent backs and tired eyes I saw it,
not in young love,
for the young only love themselves
and selfishly,
their parents.
No, I saw real poetry
again I saw it
and smiled, sadly.
For all things are temporary.