Today
I read some of Slouching toward Nirvana in the bookstore.
We’re in a recession.
And I’m always broke even when the economy is fine.

In Post Office, Bukowski’s character realizes
that it’s just him, he’s the one in hell.          Not his coworker.
Artists             just wake up in a pit of fire every morning I guess,
except when their brain chemistry is over-easy.

I’m an artist.

And everyone else is abstract…figments…3000 miles distant.
I’d have to stretch to understand you all
if I weren’t looking at you through the prism of a crystal earring.
I feel like I’m omniscient
when I do that.

Everyone has a vice.
I have prisms

and magnolia petals that
I weave into soft little bathrobes. 

If I knew you, or even if I didn’t, I wouldn’t hurt you.
I would protect you!
I would save you!
From everything!  

That’s just the way I am.  And it wouldn’t be the first time
someone called me savior.  

He had silky hair and dreamy eyes,
and he meant every word
even after his body lied
and I was crucified.

I have very vivid dreams.
Sometimes I can see the future, but never when I want to.

All these years later
I’m still waiting for a day when I won’t be broke.

Someday I want to be able to buy Slouching Toward Nirvana.
And we’ll go to the junk yard and get a new backseat for the car,
one that’s not encrusted with a decade’s-worth of play dough and fish cracker smudge.
Oh, happy day!
Believe me,
I am not being sarcastic.

I wake up every day with flames threatening my
painstakingly crafted flower-petal bathrobe.

If I ever come into any money, if any
patron dump truck arrives and just pours it out into the yard,
next to the woodpile
or the burn pile,
I’ll plant a grove of magnolia trees.
Then my bathrobes will always be fresh and the water I use to water the trees
will keep Satan and
all his nefarious little multitasking imps,
the ones that like to patrol the edge of the woods
and the edge of a heart,
just looking, and looking, and looking for a way in--

well my flowers and water will keep them away.
I’m an artist, I tell you, I do what artists must do.

And I certainly CAN NOT answer the phone
when I’m wearing any kind of flower petals.  

I do what must be done with paintbrushes and pens and paper and ink and
my foolish heart, I do what I can
to save people
whenever they will let me save them
from
their everyday.
From themselves.
From the forgetful, fidgety, flippant
Hand of fate.

But please, it will only jinx
our love and make
my palms bleed,
Please
Don’t
Ever
Call
Me
Savior.

Phoebe Wilcox lives on a little rock floating in outer space, a northerly section with trees, known as Pennsylvania. She’s got a husband and kids and a low-maintenance garden with bald spots. For some reason she sometimes thinks of taking ballet lessons. The first chapter of her novel, Angels Carry the Sun, has been published in “Wild River Review.” Recent poetry may be found in “Blue Collar Review” and “Gloom Cupboard,” and is forthcoming in “Fiction at Work,” “The Battered Suitcase,” “The Northville Review,” “Waterways,” “Counterexample Poetics,” “Sixers Review,” “13th Warrior,” “Bartleby Snopes,” “The Black Boot,” and others.