Ergo

for Carter Monroe

Beer cans at your feet,
you toss down your straw hat,
sigh.

I have looked
into the Buddha's belly,
you say, reach
for another Schlitz.

One eye springs wide
on your forehead.
A snake wriggles free,
quotes both Jung 
and Carroll,
offers one wish.

I scoop the cans
into a trashbag, 
and say, I want

the sun, warm as a lover's hand, 
on my back every morning,
the moon, carving its smile
into darkness, come night.

No matter I exceeded my limit.
You already dream in your chair.


Pris Campbell
©2004


Art: Photograph of the poet, Carter Monroe

About Carter Monroe:
"there lives in the provinces a creative soul who spends his days quietly observing reality with a fresh and penetrating eye.  carter monroe reveals his bardic feelings with a mature and honest voice in poetry, novels, short stories, and essays.  carter's writings possess the spritzy edge of jack kerouac, "bro" brautigan's softness, and the jazzy coolness of a coltrane tenor sax 'improv'."

     t. kilgore splake (Calumet, Michigan) - poet/photographer - author of Backwater Graybeard Twilight and other works too numerous to list.

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