From Nerve Cowboy #12 Fall 2001

SOJA
(a polish painter)

Scott Weaver

He was there the night I was arrested,
trying to hide me under the pool table
of some shit bar, then a week later
I see him in the daylight and he says,

Hey baby, I was trying to eek you out,
the PO-lice weren't having it....

and I say hey, cool, the cuffs are off and anyway
how's the painting, you moving to NY
or what

and he slides into his wrinkled-headed grin and says
a month man, a month or so cause my cousin's got this place
in SoHo, and I'm going with some slides if I got the money

but for now I'm working the black shift,
a 71st street warehouse, getting off at 10
in the a.m., driving for beers and riding drunk
for the next two hours, the cops don't see shit
cause it's too early and I'm living a different life,
by the time clock, not the sun

and I think
damn his talent, damn his brush and canvas
because we both know he'll never
make New York, months from now
I'll be at his house drinking cheap beer
locked among hundreds of paintings,
each one as ready for the world as we are.



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