the glove box poet

by Robert Roley

gone downtown heard some old geezer gassin’
            they can’t take nothin’ from you once you’re skint

                                    holy marginalia
                                                           rat can!

upright gait
opposable thumbs
            laying on shackles of spiel
in the rhyming
                        of grifters and lords
            only the scabrous
                        repetition of platitudes
            the myth
                        of the homogeneous man

gripped in the fanciful
            seethe of certainty
if only they’d speak
            i’d plagiarize the gods