Quid Pro Quo (2004)

Twelve feet from me she sits
Hair fatigued, stringing down in limp worn-out curls
Like the muckiest of mops
Amateurish ankle tats, red and green sunshine
A chain of vines, a dangling Celtic cross
A washed-out cardigan robin's egg blue
A floral paisley baby-doll top hiding floppy, bulbous tits
Faded camo pants and black flip-flops

She knows she's cool
Too too cool
Bitching to the bartender
About her DUI

It sucks I don't have my car, man
Tips at the restaurant are for shit
And my roommate is a bitch
Busting my balls about my guitar
Yeah I play at all hours
Man, she can't understand
It's my art, dude
Girl just don't have it in her soul
Not like I do, I breathe music, man
It's like air, dude, it's poetry
It's gotta be beautiful
I need some beauty in my life, man

She spies me from one corner of her eye
My image filters into her peripheral vision
Past the thick black plastic frame of her eyeglasses
And believing herself unseen
She sneers at my plainness
Curls her lip at my conventionality
Despises what she sees
As colorless words plod through her head
Words like vanilla
Words like water
Words like nothing
She rolls her eyes at the bartender
Silently mocking me
Unaware that she is a poem
Even as she composes me as one in her head

And that poetry isn't always the beauty in our lives, man
And that she has just become, for me
An ugly, dirty, sad, stupid poem