Thank you for noticing the tattoo
on my hand
4 letters

A sort of soul guide
that allowed us to have coffee
smile, laugh & read poetry

In the face of death
who doesn't stop staring
at us
with sweet breath
an open furnace

Waiting to turn us into so much
char-coal

But we read poetry and laughed
in the face of all our angst
in between trains and drains and jobs
and aching brains and tests and papers
and fears

the fears of not publishing
aspirations of the street artists
puking it up on the sidewalk for free
(you and me
giving it away
the words we spent a lifetime
accruing