Here's my poem from last week. I borrowed a lottt of it from my community service convicts. i mean.. friends. We were suppose to write a poem from the perspective of someone else so, of course I chose to do this.




“I just caught the biggest damn turtle that I’d ever seen!”
This was my story I’d like to share with the guys.
“Catch it, cook it. Make that sonofabitch into turtle stew.”

Chew, spit, huck. Repeat.
These were my Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays,
I drive around the accused for the Carroll County Community Service Program

“When you’re 18 you carry a .22 in one hand and a pabst in the other and shoot whatever the fuck you want.”

That was Jim’s favorite story to tell.
They would all start the same but always end with
“Back in ’67, you couldn’t tell me shit!”

Then there was Matt.
Four hundred hours service, five years probation and three thousand in fines.
He’s the reason Carrollton sounds unpoetic

But the best ones were told by Jerry.
Stories like “I’d fix my ’69 with three wrenches. God damn I was good!” and the insatiable “Take 20 years off of me and I’d be all over that,” were always welcomed.

And there was always Sammy,
he was there every day but we were all too scared to ask why
“One more damn day and I’m through with this civil shit,” he would say.
You’d be surprised how many different ways there is to say that.