You’ve got no nerve to walk down this street
\nat night, but you know someone who did –
\nand phoned the cops
\nwhen he passed a man carrying a machete
\non his way to the Avenue.<\/p>\n
Why don’t you scream it
\nthat you’ve been waiting on the same bus
\nthat’s not going to take you
\nanywhere you planned on going.
\nIf my grandmother were alive
\nduring Covid and living off Truman still,
\nshe’d be captive and when you got her going,
\nyou’d know you pissed off the wrong woman.<\/p>\n
But there’s nothing really to turn on
\nexcept a hydrant on a day so hot
\nyou could fry an egg on the sidewalk,
\nbut the wrong people need all the comforts
\nand the veneer of pity coats Admiral in
\ntents and wrinkled green plastic bags approximating the same
\nwhen the force shows up to haul away their makeshift village.<\/p>\n
Makes it all seem so cruel that
\nsomeone – not anyone who could afford to cash it in –
\nbought the winning Powerball
\nthat was sold at the gas station that serves
\nas a waystation to the denizens of a part of town
\npeople call home for
\nits proximity to an intersection to hold a sign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You’ve got no nerve to walk down this street at night, but you know someone who did – and phoned the cops when he passed a man carrying a machete on his way to the Avenue. Why don’t you scream it that you’ve been waiting…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[5463,5464,5465],"class_list":["post-118766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem","tag-bob-dylan","tag-positively-4th-street","tag-visions-of-johanna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118766"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":118934,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118766\/revisions\/118934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}