What Happens When Your Head is in Poetry

I spent the evening reading poetry:
Charles Bukowski, Jack McCarthy, Jr., Bob Holman.
Not your typical elitist crowd.

Spent the evening reading poetry
as I rode Muni to and from the pizza parlor
where I drank beer
and listened to old timers
pluck words from their mouths
and spit them in the air.

Where I drank beer
and listened to their words
plunge, tumble,
execute loopy-de-loops
and linguistically musical
feats of aerial prowess.

Where I drank beer
and watched
one old timer, a thin man
with a cane and glasses
a black hat dusted with city soot and soil
from the streets
on his head.

An old timer
with black leathery skin
and long, slender fingers
tracing the staccato pattern of his words
in the air.

I want to kiss those hands
suck those fingers
for they are as mercurial
as compelling
as his words.

I would like to take that old timer
into my bed
feel the heat from his old street poet’s shanks and marred back
feel the calluses of his hands
penetrate my white skin
seep through my pores
and bones and blood
and sinew and turn my words
into rich, dark-red glutinous plasma
like his.

Instead

I come home and write:

I want to be a
hard-drinking
steady-fucking woman
who doesn’t care
if anyone calls her
whore
slut
cunt.
I’d smile and say
yes, that’s what makes my words
taste of my own juice
still succulent
still savory
after all these years.

Truth is
alcohol sucks a woman dry
so I won’t drink so much.
but I’ll still fuck.