I open the wallet & remove my last $15 to buy a bootleg Elvis Presley CD

w / the money I was saving to repay my twin brother Sam who yesterday

screamed through a mouth full of apple pie: "don't hide from, become

the rain"—so since this is a downpour I think, what the hell, acquire the album

from this hobo woman with waterfall hair & hole-filled umbrellas, sitting behind

a rusted, aluminum card table outside the asphyxiated auditorium

that once housed musicians & now parrot-pussies, then scurry off

through cross-town traffic like Hendrix in Hilfiger wondering if he ever felt

like this, tripping all the way down Clear View & Liberty Dr. where I hop on a bus

& meet a lady called Sharon whom I'd probably marry, if I was Brad Land &

her last name was Olds because she says to me: "Charlie Parker died broke

the same as Bo Diddly but at least he rode-out on white tracks of smoke

like a mortal," & after 1, 2 stops, a poor, pissed-off-punk-kid shoots the driver in the head

w / a cap gun claiming, "My father has a heart of darkness and that shit's hereditary"

like power & the Williams Sisters, "win" cries the announcer from the cheap crackling

speakers but they'll fall-off too, like Tiger Woods' stroke—until he did

a Gooding Jr., a Snipes, a me, since we three share the same (mis)understanding

that marrying a Swedish model is more American than black men playing golf

anyway, in this long-standing-un/hyphen/ated-imperalistic-cell-block-style poem.