Poetry is a shoebox

Where I keep all the bits and pieces,

the left overs, the saved parts

the map of how to change the world.

Of course the world changed without my poetry,

often for the worse, often for the worst,

but if you will dig around between

the rusty railroad spike, a sharks tooth,

petrified and dug up in Montgomery,

you might find a half a ticket to some 1970s movie,

a fragment of scripture, a picture of us

when we were gods, or fools who thought we were.

I am pretty sure there is still a button

to my corduroy leisure suit jacket.

I am sure you can push that button

and it will open up a portal to a pizza hut

 with sticky red plastic tablecloths

and where we drank tea and coke

in tall red plastic glasses and played rummy for nothing.

 Dont push the button.

I need to believe the portal is there.

I cant afford to have it disappear

along with all my dead friends

I’ll never see again.