national bohemian, renegade poet laureate of baltimore city

make me poet laureate of this fucking city already.

because who else has even attempted

to translate it so kindly despite how

much it’s dirt it’s thrown on me? who else’s ego

death is buried under the shot tower in a 40

of boh? i wanted out, you know, when a garden suburb

was all i knew and the air was stale

with old money—and that’s not to say that now

i don’t look more than respectfully at philly

or the south of france sometimes. i stayed;

i learned fifty-seven new kinds of drunk and hurt.

my guts now feel like raisins after half a beer.

who else can trace the cracks in every midtown dive

ceiling without looking? whose blood is one

with the concrete outside, but mine?