Some poetic yeast for our daily bread, by JPJ

As part of our everyday experiment called life and how to live it, I have been trying to find a vehicle to carry some of the voices here at the Georgetown homeless drop-in center. One of my fellow travelers on this journey whose Woody Guthrie lyric meets Goethe's rhyme in the dry corn fields of Van Gogh, sheds some poetic yeast to our daily bread:
Please enter:

Mr. Jimmy Preston Jordan

3 poems as seen in the Street Sense (DC homeless newspaper):


As I Lay Down on St. James Green

It thrills me to think that Falstaff, too
May have slept one off here, English beer
Is not for sissies, London drinking habits of the
very rich
And derelict. But I'm happy to think
that Falstaff
Might be my pillow on this balding, balmy,
sunlit, rotten day.
I say 'rotten'; of course, personally, I couldn't
be more ecstatic,
Though it's true that the city (all cities) have
a way of
Burying themselves. Successive layers,
demon-sifted, stratified:
There's a world of
Concepts to go absolutely bonkers with.
I could shape this
Into a sonnet, if I tried. Really, I could.
Isn't it
The implication of free verse>
That we work smarter,
When the fact is we just work less?
Let Falstaff be my pillow,

Then, ninth ring of soily hell beneath me.
There is a way,
In English literary
History,
for James Joyce to have been Gogarty's friend.
As I
Lay down on St. James Green.



Blacker than the Pot, for Sure


Blacker than the pot
For sure, for me to take issue
With a fellow prisoner and poet
Over a bag of lost toiletries. I
Lose thing:
A name, an identity, a pair of pinking shears,
A lawnmower, a raison d'etre, a nation,
A universe, an entire Biblical people
Full of pride and trust. Mea culpa,
But while we're at it, if it is true at all
That the putative pot did once call the aforementioned kettle black,
If these housemaidens are to be believed in the least,
What did the kettle say in return? If
The right hand doesn't know what the left hand
Is doing, what does the left hand know?
It all? Or only everything? This, by the way,
Is the sound of one hand clapping: whupwhupwhup -
My sorry bad self bitch-slapping you
Across the yard for reasons.
Milkshake, indeed.

Return to the sheep, as the French, for
Reasons so inscrutably theirs, sometimes say.
We needn't confuse an adage with a cliche:
The one is good for being tired with, the
Other has been known to open tin cans in a pinch. It doesn't
Do to confuse an angry gorilla with a crossword
Puzzle, but if you find yourself in this desperate
Situation, try doing what I did: blow a heaping handful
Of cayenne pepper in his face. PETA will be at
your door. Paul and Mary will be home.
So, for that matter, will Simon and Garfunkel,
And whatever sorry mess is left of the Byrds.

In conclusion, we say, under the circumstances -
Why under? Why are we forever under
The circumstances? Are we to be oppressed
By a mere preposition? Can't we for once be
Over them? I myself am over the circumstances.
I reject the circumstances. The circumstances are
Dead to me. I bitch-slap the circumstances
All around the yard, up the stairs and then down again.
True, "under" is a beautiful word. As prepositions go,
It manages to be at the same time sleek,
Slender, and fulsome. It behooves us
To remember God made this preposition.
And who (it is not He), by the way, is accountable
For prepping the prepper of the position?
And what if racer Danica Patrick assumes the pole position?
I cannot believe
I am the only one out there
Sleep-deprived nightly
By these life-as-we-know-it-endangering
Insane linguistic anomalies:
Shout out if you hear me. Please.



Lamenting the Deplorable Condition
of the Poetic Bureaucracy
(With Apologies to Regis Philbin)

Damn me, Oprah Winfrey; so you're the poet laureate.
No, that's not right. Is it Anne Rice? It changes
Oftener than the weather. Damn me, David Berkowitz - no, that's not
It either. Didn't it used to be Billy Collins?
And what the hell was all that about? It's like
Awarding the Nobel in medicine to some half-baked
Quack with a bedside manner. No offense,
Billy Collins. You don't have enemies. Oh,
That was what that was about.

Let's face it. Nowadays everybody and his brother-in-law
is the poet laureate. That guy mowing the grass
In the public park with the orange vest and
Mismatched socks, he's the poet laureate.
A carful of Mexicans high on tequila and the cult
Of the virgin, busting out colorful with sweet andeles-
They're the poet laureate.
If Kid Rock were suddenly the poet laureate, then
Things would change. Somebody has to feel it.
Passions would ignite. People would throw moon pies
From festively colored hammocks
And pull each other's hair out,
Gouge out each other's lyin' eyes.
That's what I'm all about. Change.

OK, so T.S. Eliot hated Whitman, despised every
Little thing he stood for, projectile-vomited every time
He heard the other's name. Now that I've won my own
Palme d'Or at Cannes for Very Best Actress in an
Undertaker's role, I feel I can say these things. Let loose. Get it
Out in the open. But in his infirm old age, the man who'd penned
"Geronition," then forgotten what he'd written, relented Whitman?
He ain't so awful. So then suddenly everybody liked Whitman again,
But now they despised Eliot. Go figure. That's history. That's
The history of our literature. If it doesn't make you sit down
In the middle of a crowded urban sidewalk and set the world
Right afire with the magnitude of your righteous lamentations,
Not to mention your wrongful terminations, then you'll
Probably just go to work tomorrow. Quick: Who's the poet laureate?
I'll have poet laureates for 600, Alex. That's right! You
Win the trip to Bermuda! The charming, Canadian-born host
Of Jeopardy is our one and only poet laureate.