it had been a good day
until two cruisers moved-in
and cut me off
in the crosswalk,
a sunny afternoon
in the city,
one cop threw me
onto the hood of the car
another hand-cuffed me.
Me, the "unidentified man"
in the newspaper story
of the morning edition.
The cops knew who I was
but I didn’t.
The bartender knew that
I did not need another drink
but I knew I did and
after he shut me off
I climbed over the bar
and made my own,
and when he slapped the drink
from my hand
I punched him and
ran out
and became "unidentified"
for a day
or two, until cops
closed in
at the intersection of
State and Main.
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Wayne confesses:"The weird experience of reading about myself in a newspaper as 'unidentified man' stuck with me, remaining raw enough—despite having happened long ago (and before I got off the sauce), to serve as basis, emotionally, of my poem."
WAYNE F. BURKE's poetry and prose has been published in a wide variety of publications online and in print (including The Two-Five). He had published six full-length poetry collections, most recently Diflucan (BareBack press, 2019). He lives in the central Vermont area.
I thought it was some Indian guy
chanting
saying prayers
the way they do
kind of a murmur
louder and louder
until I woke
thinking wtf?
And got up
out of bed
and went to the window
and down below
about fifty yards or so
an orange truck,
and some guy
running a chain-saw—
what the Christ!
I stuck my head out the window
and screamed
HEY
and they looked up
one jerk waved
and they kept at it
tossing branches into the bed of the truck
and I shouted HEY!
but they did not even look,
ignored me
like I was not there
like I did not exist
like maybe I was a piece of shit,
and I tell you
I was pissed—
had not slept more than two hours
all night
and what gave them the right
I ask you
to wake people
at 6 AM
and break the city ordinance besides?
How rude and obnoxious
I stuck the barrel of my rifle,
a 30.06,
out the window
and
just to scare them
fired a shot over their heads
only
FUCK
I missed
and shot the guy in the head
and he dropped
and I thought, hell
no use stopping now
and I shot the guy who
went to the first guy's side
and then I shot the girl
standing by the truck's gate
(another head shot)
and the other guy
who had dropped the chain-saw
and hid behind the truck
I could not get a bead on him
and put a few rounds into the engine block
to try and flush him
but he stayed put
until
as I reloaded
he made a run for it
and
in the old days
I would have got him
but I was rusty, see
and led the fucker a cunt-hair too much
the lucky prick
and, yeah
you could say that
I over-reacted a little
and maybe even that
I was wrong
but who are you to say anything
to me?
You wake me
at 6 AM
on a morning after I have not slept
and before I have had my coffee
and see what you get
you son-of-a-bitch.
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Wayne confesses:"I wrote this poem after being woke one morning by some workers tearing a tree down outside my apartment. So pissed at being woke so early—I'd had a bad insomniac night—I went outside to confront them, thought better of it, and returned inside and wrote the poem. Art as catharsis."
WAYNE F. BURKE has published six full-length collections of poetry. Five with Bareback Press and one with Alien Buddha Press. Most recently, from Bareback, Diflucan (2019). He lives in Vermont.
