The Man Who Burned Down the Ippel Building

The man who burned down the Ippel Building
taught rock guitar until cancer conquered
his mother’s lungs and he fled to L.A.,
dreaming of Strip stardom’s
drugs and groupies,
hanging with hair bands
with Aqua-Net bangs,
raiding panties and pantries
like raccoons, all too aware
of their junkie-pale skin,
red needle pinpricks popping
along suburban blueblood veins,
connecting the dots
on a map through Hell and back
before the jail cot turned cold,
not long after the sunny Cali
cannabis fields began harvesting
agents from the D.E.A.

The man who burned down the Ippel Building
was probably smoking in his bed,
in his windowless closet,
enough space for bed, chair,
TV with foil-wrapped antenna;
large enough for two bodies
to hotbox dirt-weed and nicotine;
but a room, closet, or cell
doesn’t matter much
when you end up
too poor for freedom,
too crazy to work,
too hurt to feel pain.
We discard them in these boxes
and wait for the decay
of flesh, bone and mind;
silently judge and therefore claim
a man unclaimed by men;
the man who sorts trash
becomes trash
and when trash catches fire,
the whole block burns.

Published in Qua Literary & Fine Arts Magazine, Winter, 2012. University of Michigan-Flint

Published in Collected Poems, 2016