Bouquet Triptych
with a line by R. Dwayne Betts
|
there is a
difference between a schizo’ & any other crazy on the street him the one live downstairs in the first apt when you come in through the front way he the poster child for paranoid one week off his meds & he got everybody sniffin for the scent of gasoline or sneakin up the fire escape because no one want a bullet lodged in the head a trench knife plunged beneath the shoulder blade all ‘cause they wanna take the stairs there is a |
difference
between a fiend & any other crazy on the street him the one sittin over there beneath the light chewin on his ugly words hyper off that candy stuff he a bona fide cracked head see how he always got some trinket to sell a fresh change of clothes he got a home somewhere & everything in it got a price that little rock consuming everything escape! because no one not even that demon inside his sunken head can hide a conversation make sense of his high anymore his mouth a blade a slick skin a taut brown leather stretch around his busy skull there is a difference |
between the
drunk sleepin outside crazy feverish on the couch in my lobby on the other side of my wall takes some gettin used to i hear the chronic cough see the bulb sizzlin out beneath the door he fear discovery in his dim crushed throat he the sufferer prison the sinner’s bouquet a halo circling his illness never beat the bottle love missin what they used to have now mean nothin cheatin became his life & he can’t escape because no one wanna lose the gift of a sound mind the difference shallow good between him & i reality is a dream for us both a blade-thin difference fills cells the money a dividing wall and it be prison |
by Joy Priest
Joy Priest is a writer born and raised in Louisville, KY. She has received fellowships and grants from Callaloo, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and Rutgers University-Newark, where she will be an MFA in Poetry candidate beginning Fall 2015. Her poems and essays have been published or are upcoming in pluck! Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture, Drunken Boat, Best New Poets 2014, and The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, among others.