The Slopes

Woke up and got dressed

then I went out to meet the day

Time to settle up the bill: cough up the

soft halcyon memory; then swallow it again

Blowing butane kisses down the boulevard 

whistling through the open plain– 

I was buried in a coffin, down there

by the slopes; a

wildflower dreamland with

red petals of a witch’s blood

By night I smoke the poppy

underneath my burlap hood

The coffin marked my grave, and kept

the only wage I made

Then I woke up and got dressed,

I went out to meet the day

Ain’t it a thing, to find a place

where this beat burlap bag may lay,

I’ll whistle myself a rhyme, 

I got fuck all but time

But when the day is done, 

there’s an ache in my blistered feet

And by night when I’m all clean and neat,

I’ll trudge down to the slopes

I’ll slip into my grave, 

wrapped in those burlap sheets,

whisper sweet good-nights and cut the light

Another day with no pay,

down and about with

unpaid debts and nothing else to say– 

only that the burlap’s catching cold

down where the wildflowers grow

By Jack Ciontos