[lyricism] [WITH WHISKEY AND A WINDSHIELD]
a man sings as he walks—looking human—with ideas
in him
so I take him from that world—
place him
in the bell of my brain—tongue the clapper—
let him distill
like a whiskey
in fatty loops and chambers—a double
distillation
now that I’ve walked away—let him boil awhile—
better
compounds here—
better heart—
I can utter something pithy about loneliness—
how clean
it is—
like the inside of a poem—all glass there—
I wonder—am I audience
or just projecting crude ambient cellular noise—
bad
private cinemas—
the bike he has he walks—
it is early spring—
puddles here and there—both his
by some measure
of ownership—
I think he’s poor—one of the invisibles—
an economic pump between where he lives
and liquor store—
bus station—
city park—
where he congregates and choruses
there are so many homeless
some days
despite the chill—already I’ve gone too far—
forgive me—
I have imagination and a heated seat—
forget
I too am just another needle stuck in a groove—
black vinyl disc of city—
old school longing—
analog—since I could stop the car
and do that Whitman thing—
give him money—
it could be the man I spent an hour with
when it was warm
and his city could rub its edge
against my city—
but it’s hard to tell—he’s so bundled up—
and now a distillation—
the third—
I think the bike may be stolen—
the front tire looks flat—
the bike is useless—
he needs the money—there is already a snarl
of used ones
outside Dicker and Deal—
skeletons—
lost ponies—strange optics since the wheels
look like lenses sometimes—
but that could be a horse too—
since a pony
is a way of envisioning world as a car is not—
the windshield is not a lens—
it does not clarify—
the vapor inside is not the sweet liqueur
of thinking—it just seems that way
sometimes—I’m local—
I see many other locals and wonder about their lives—
know up ahead
there is a railroad track—
sprung moorings—I will have to swerve around
Dennis Hinrichsen’s, tenth book of poems, Flesh-plastique, is out this March from Green Linden Press. He has poems appearing or forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, The Glacier, Ninth Letter, The Pedestal, Posit, RHINO, Timber and Witness. He lives in Lansing, Michigan where he workshops with local writers.