A homeless man I know
          all smiles, artwork and show,
sits at Walgreen’s, his back
          against the wall.
This morning’s offerings,
          artful faces on envelopes
like prayer flags and flowers
          laid out
from his sack of paper on the walk.

“I get anywhere from eight cents to twenty dollars,”
          he says,
showing some missing teeth.
          “That’s very Zen of you,” I thought,
          and I bought something basic,
          beat, in his smile and
          in his envelope, too.
          “It’s not Modigliani,
          but it will do.”

His girlfriend is in the slammer!
A bike accident
cost her foot, his house.

I like his honesty, gifts,
his warmth, grit!
his Buddha’s smile –
no guile.

One special envelop
covered with poetry and art,
he sent to her last month,
but the face was returned:
“UNSEALED”; “received in Tucson.”
The art and verse on the back
had been cut or torn away.
He went down to complain;
the mystery at the P.O. unexplained.

With his back to Walgreen’s
for nickels a day
he gives his art like apples away.

On this street, same store
in the fifties an heiress appeared,
giving her greenbacks away,
her poet’s cottage, her painting, too.
Ruth Walgreen Stephan greeted
Robert Frost, donated the cost
of keeping a place and poor poets alive.

“I once saved a woman,” he says.
She screamed!
Some man grabbed her purse!
I knocked him down.
Held him on the ground
‘til the cops came.
No one else
would stop to help.

“Now this store
lets me stay –
all day, if I want.
It’s now my spot.          (on Speedway and Craycroft)

“I’m fifty-one,
Still strong!!
I know what I can do.
Never been in prison;
it’s prison art I show.
I’M NOT SOME CAT
TO THROW QUARTERS AT!!
I’m no hobo without a heart!”

          He stands up.
          We shake hands, hug.
          “What’s your name?”

“’MAD DOG’ John
See, I sign that way!”
          I choose one,
          a grinning pumpkin mug
          drawn on the back
          with all the teeth intact.