mandy grimm

With A Poet

An artist's struggle in the movies
is always blanketed with a gossamer
film of beauty, a filter for poverty
and depression, dirty dishes scattered
just so, to suggest inability to
focus on such mundane daily tasks,
a couch, just sunken, threadbare
enough to fall in love with the artist
resting on its springs.

This image is still afloat in my head
when I find you at the end of a trail of coffee
sloshed from its cup, from the kitchen
to the patio where you write,
three days of newspaper scattered beneath
your feet, cigarette dangling from your lips and
piles more in an old beer bottle beside you.

You ask, eyes askance, if I could pick up
today's late edition because, you're sorry,
but you can't find your wallet again and,
here, read this, it's new.

And the lines of this new work are just artless,
perfect enough to fall in love with the man
who penned them.