friday at walmart

you had cereal for dinner
because the food stamps don't come
till the end of the month and you had
to have cigarettes so mlk and grains
it is. i say you're too poor to smoke
certain you've heard it before
but maybe this time it'll sink in,
be your idea like how you're twenty eight
and the years don't seem to be stopping
maybe now you begin to think how living
on eight hundred dollars a month
is no way to spend the next twenty years.
get a car, get the breathalyzer, pay
you dues.first baby out, you walking slow
to the big exit momma's been racing against
and it dawns on you she won't be here
much longer to save you or your baby when
things get rough. like she lent you her last twenty
and now, you both starve.

blech. this is why i don't write no more.
i'm so weary of disappointing the universe.