sometimes you’ll forget who you are
you’ll go buy black rites candles
carving pentagrams on the linoleum floor
with a pulsing knife you found in the streets.
As you put on Costa Rican coffee,
and fill the sink with soap suds and hot water
the virgins you need will seem so far away.
You’ll start telling people you’re from Montana
(instead of strip mall New Jersey)
Ekalaka, Ryegate, Swimming Women Road,
“I’m from Electric Peak”
“Gunsight Mountain, ever heard of it?”
Tell them you cut your teeth on a ranch
breaking wild horses, “love me now?”
at the local college, sign up for a course
“Building Hot Air Balloons 101”
tell pretty girls at the bar, “baby, I’d like
to put your face on a hot air balloon
and release you up into the sky.”
“That sounds nice,” hopefully they’ll say.
Or: go jump in pickup basketball games
on the asphalt court with the rusted net
behind the plaza with Fried Paradise
where you used to bread the chicken
after school for minimum wage
and you knew exactly who you were
–Bud Smith