Poetry

A sitter of public benches will come to
In nether fog tonight.
He drains heeltap from a beer bottle and lights a nubbin.
Pigeons are roosting but who can say where?
The scabrous skin of this urban autochthon
Bubbles with pustules;
The whiffling fringe swaddles larval eggs.
He rises and declaims: Lines from Agamemnon?
Or the gibberish of dementia praecox?
Earlier while he was foraging for food
In the back of a chop house
A peace officer sauntered up and said,
"Get outta my garbage."

Get outta my garbage.

He reclines.
The hollow heart at the core of the wild nighttime
Beats time in desolate duple measure:
Red light, broken promises;
Green light, a penchant for grandiosity;
And trucks thunder in the mute naught
Like iron stallions,
Or the iambs of Aeschylus. That cordial detritus
Teetering on a sewer lip reads:
It's Our Pleasure To Serve You.