"how grimly we hold onto our misery"

by Alan Catlin

Whored out and drug sick,
bumming cigarettes from half-
dead sailors in cheap side
taverns, one foot in the grave
and the other about to slide,
sharing tokes with lung sick
losers, needles with a dying
breed, eyes and mouths like
a mad dog's in the morning,
a dead one at night, still standing
but about to fall, prayer flags
from lost tribes affixed to wrists,
body prepped for plain air burial
on baked tar barroom roof, junkyard
rate in shadows, waiting.