poe-pan | Installation by Dave Roskos | there is story behind the broken frying pan….(years ago around 1988 I was in a band called The Lotusates (lotusate is a barbituate from olden times), it was before I had a sax so I was screaming poems over noise & banging on metal. I hit the cast iron frying pan with a hammer & it shattered & flew into the (very small) audience. but I kept a handle on it).
the young woman
with the Chinese
character tattooed
to the back of her
neck says she’s
grateful for these
meetings, that we
are all really cool
& that she’s grateful
we’re always here
for her despite
the fact that
she’s always
in & out
she says she’s grateful
she only has
hepatitis C
& not HIV,
that she’s really
trying to be good
because she knows
if she keeps
getting high
she’s gonna get real sick
& maybe even die
after the meeting
a kind soul
with over ten
years clean
points out to
her that she
isn’t bad
trying to get good,
she’s sick
trying to get well
& she blushes
like a little girl
& says thank you
why he got canned from the poem factory
for Tom Obrzut
Got fired at the Poetry Factory.
my poems were malfunctioning, they said.
Poetry Boss shook his head,
“There goes another one
who’ll never be famous
till after he’s dead.”