This is a rough draft of a poem created from some scribbling into my compact Moleskine during one of my walkabouts. It is based on a job I had a couple of years ago.
On my lunch hour, I read Frank O’Hara and Allen Ginsberg.
I’m not writing at all.
I send a thousand photocopied letters by machine,
but I long to write a personal one by hand.
Everyday, I bought a Philly Cheesesteak Sandwich from the Marketplace.
Now, I take hour-long walks into Balboa Park.
I take Lunch Poems with me to read under a liquid amber,
but sometimes I listen to Antidepressant on my iPod.
One day, at the end of the Prado Bridge,
I find a man playing with the Tarot deck.
All I have to give him was $2.
He tells me I’d advance on the job.
Yeah, with a boss who was seething silently in rage,
I’d advance right out the door.
Tags: Allen Ginsberg, Balboa Parl, creative writing, Frank O'Hara, Lloyd Cole, poem, poetry, San Diego
