Wrote this years ago, and just rediscovered it. Merry Christmas.
Part One
The bodies bump and tussle in the
night
Slick with youth's yawning focused
poet's love
Sharp like a fresh wound that time
will soon heal
The non-voyeur buries his skull in
deep sand
Searching for an answer quick and
easy
Midnight is long past, yet day is
remembered
The orange sky autumn's lovely
tragedy
Halloween christening my child's
heart
Romancing in the mind and lonely
hand
Beset by meager slivers of souls
Sweet of breast and soft of throat
but doe-eyed
Why should a beggar get to choose?
Who has crowned him king and judge?
Righteous and worthy are we in our
eyes
Never afraid of bustling crowds
Never lacking in charisma or
character
Never cloaked in silhouette and
subway grime
Never making dangerous eyes out of
steamy windows
Never shying from the mutant glow
of the street lights
But always passing hours in
derelict hideaways
Always lingering at blue notes ripe
with jazz
Always pushing past the mangy
harlequins on Addison
Always leaning in a corner with no
way out
Part Two
Yet hope was handed to me by
trembling strings
Stretched out across waving amber
expanses
I shook slender hand and bid her
come
Well-met we were at Navy Pier
Walking shoulder to shoulder along
the Rhineland
Fertile with jagged glass and
cigarette butts
Smiled we did at life's eccentricities
I played the gentle heart's part
with abandon
Watery-eyed and mistletoed,
murmuring and glancing
Beholding waifs with windy worried
expressions
Kissed by a bubbling insatiate
thirst
The city noise was a chorus song
sung sweet
Beneath the citadels gothic and
zebra-striped
I left the smoldering wreck of my
foundation
Retreated I did to sit at Ignatius'
noble feet
Long-thought solitude bestowed upon
me once more
There I sowed a saccharine
construction
When snow began to fall, I went for
the El train
My hands were cupped as we passed
the boneyard
Strewn with dilapidated hulks
ravaged and decimated
So soon would there be light
When Helios warmed my reptile blood
My choice had been made
Part Three
The train station looms ahead, vast
and empty
Electric blues spark, cackle, and
move ahead
Yet one remains entrenched in murky
recesses
Staring downward at a sticky
concrete floor:
A vaudeville theater and a
gout-stricken man
An angular oddball with a penchant
for polish sausage
Two Russians with bulbous eyes and
a lisping delivery
They speak of European girls and communist
fatalities
Ivy-grown stone under neighborhood
villas
The crack of Kentucky wood hammering a homerun
Crowds draining from the coliseum
and into the bar-filled streets
Stacked with memorabilia of beloved
losers
That time in Chinatown,
searching for the golden pig
Finding plastic toys and foreign
language comic books
Paying for over-priced, salted-down
chow mein.
He rode the El downtown in the
twilight
Red lines streaking past tenement houses
cold and drafty
Mexicans living Spanish in front of
the whole wide world
Water lapping against the lonesome
pier, beneath the moon
Jogging between suits and
spiked-hair and bums
Fat, fetid, and filthy, eating
trash, pillaging cans
Under the bridge beneath the Tower of Babel, a deserted night-town
This was my playground and I shall
miss it.
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