Real Diamonds in the Rough by Brenton Booth

We were unpublished and thin and mad

we slept of a day and didn’t care where 

we worked as long as we weren’t there 

much and had enough for a room dark 

enough to hide away

we kept the blinds closed day and night 

the windows didn’t open but we never

asked the landlord to fix them

we sent stories of suicide, depression, and

undiscovered answers to The Atlantic and 

the editor always sent the same form rejection

except for one time when he gave us his 

private address to send future submissions

and we never sent him again

we ate hot dogs for dinner and had small

fridges without freezers filled with cans of

the cheapest whiskey and drawers with pills 

and powder hidden in torn envelopes

we dressed differently and talked differently

and rarely fucked 

but when we did it was always differently

we didn’t have a television that worked and

threw all the magazines and best-sellers

away

surviving on Dost and Nietzsche and beautiful

Miller tramping the streets

we hated the beautiful and laughed at the wealthy

and knew morality was just another word for

loss

we lived in the red-light district and were 

familiar with the face of every bar, whore, and bum

and they were with ours

we never had any money

we knew our parent’s inferior

we sat for hours and hours gazing

at the burning sun

we were failures

we were the best

we would

ever

be.

Brenton Booth Lives in Sydney, Australia. Poetry of his has appeared in Chiron Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Main Street Rag, Naugatuck River Review, Van Gogh's Ear, and Nerve Cowboy. He has two full length collections available from Epic Rites Press. brentonbooth.weebly.com