The New San Francisco Poetry Underground:
Pam Benjamin

all poems are lies

Words and perspective
burned to a point by the lens.
Focused sun, manipulated light.

Created truth is lie.
We are all the same
homeless lady screaming

into the fountain.
Her stolen sleeping bag is you.
People need food.

Let them eat cake
or make a bed out of discarded bags.
Paper is warm.

"But it's just a sleeping bag."
It never is "just anything."
A poem can be anything.

God is a poem.
I am an American.
I hate poems.

Where is your magnifying glass?
Your filter through a plastic lens.
A bird in West Oakland is a poem.

The bird is a metaphor, and concrete.
Where is your faith in architecture now?
The lens burns holes in snail shells.

Popping ants.
A mini-god.
Vengeful. Jealous

gods don't wrote poems,
They inspire them.