a poem by Andy Riverbed

Plena en Old San Juan

Tonight I saw a cockroach run away
with the short off a Marlboro Light

in between the grasp of the front of his body.
I asked myself if he too like me

was addicted to substance,
if he ate the heroin residue off the

aluminum dope bags left on the adobe-tiled
gutters of Old San Juan by junkies worse off than me.

The ATM didn't allow
me to withdraw more money than I had

when I had assumed the machine would just
charge me an overdraft fee and

I had convinced myself I could make
sixty dollars in one week easy donating plasma.

I told myself to at least find a girl to fuck
but I knew that wasn't going to happen.

Outside Café Seda I heard plena playing
and people being drunk and happy.

In honor of my nicotine-fiend roach
I glued poems on the public walls

and hoped that one day all
this bullshit would matter to someone else too.

© by Andy Riverbed

 
Gutter Eloquence Magazine ~ Issue #5 ~ September 2009