CHANGES

You ask for change
from strangers
outside the bank
but have no interest
except for words
then you try to exchange
a blank expression
from your newly bearded jaw
before a pocket mirror
by a lottery ticket
you pick up on the street
containing a lucky ten,
when your smiling face
begins to rhyme
knowing you will eat
after all,
yet losing out
from your birthright's call
it's still your time to be alive,
then why is an insightful poet
feeling guilty for no crime,
am I Dostoevsky in California
revived in the 1960's
being like Esau, a wanderer
as an outlaw survivor
fleeing under a curse tonight
not a member of the law
or clergy but loving God
and man like Whitman
in my own elegy
by standing up to read
on a blanket
our pocket verse
holding a cup for an offering
on the sand tearing up
over Ocean Beach
like a San Francisco Beat,
wanting others to recognize
my desperate plight
like a lost blackbird in April
always in stages of flight
over the motioning clouds
eyeing a wish to be wiser
saying thanks without ecstasy
to another passing angel dust soul
from Mexico City, named Jesus
who exchanges rings with me
in a poetry ceremony
of our own translation
this handsome Spanish beggar
wishes like me to be younger
yet shares his pottage with me
as we both blank out from hunger.