Dogs piss on lilacs and raisins
die the death of grapes picked
Everything changes and thoughts
are just sounds, all moving like strings picked
Without wanting to look stupid
we are just kids in the kickball line wanting to be picked
Cowards and cowboys and car thieves and cool kids
I become Buddha. I taste radicchio. I am not alone. Picked
in the barley fields. Seduced by a deep breath
at the very bottom of the trash picked.
George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, Chronogram Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, The Angle at St. John Fisher College, and 3:16 Journal. George’s blogs, essays and letters have appeared in USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Havana Times, South China Morning Post, The Buffalo News, and more.
See all his poems on Tea House here.
