dead pencils still leave a mark salvaged from the litter bin gave most of their everything from within now surrounded by cigarette butts salad oil tuna tins phone messages hydro bills coffee grinds orange peel rotting spinach or kale broken shoelaces leftover pain a sad refrain still saving a few scant lines of sentiment for a man and a night and a poem
Take these humble hearts, those who trust, perchance, too much, the ones who now shelter themselves from the agony which lingers from trying; from hoping; from believing there could be more.
Heathens, yes, for lack of a more apt word but neither an infidel, nor a fool. Where trust is too much, there is faith without discretion. There remains a longing few can see, or realize, for they need to believe.
See these unwilling victims not for what they have not been, but for each tiny gesture, shameless notion, and act of empathy, however inferred. Allow them to create, leave them to their ways. Let them be.
Teach them, these broken souls, not to look for the lesson, but to accept the graceless guidance oft shone into clotted shadows. Knowingly they will expand and contract in self-preservation, self-examination, and sorrow.
It is there, in seclusion, where errors in understanding take on perspective. There, those humble hearts, may come back to being. Each carries a pulse. They bleed silently and remorsefully. They have loved you before, and may again.
Don’t talk to me at dawn. Caught up in whispers of residual dreams beyond my control, I’m not always ready for a new day, and frequently have difficulty comprehending where the night falls.
Morning is not the time for words if the night has come before. Every breath a struggle. I wake. No heartbeat. No. No talk. Blinded by sight and sound I won’t hear the meaning, or the message.
Give voice to my days instead, where I won’t see your reflection, but will feel the wonder above the cacophony and confusion that terrorizes an otherwise monotonous day.
Evening’s long shadow laps up scraps of humanity. I pay less and less attention as the planets close in. Considering your many renditions, I await your arrival. Any night. What shade will you be this night?
Then is the time, when distance fades, where we tell each other stories. Little else matters, and we ask the impossible. Inevitably darkness consumes me, until you become less significant.
Through nights, when I’m restless, when dawn is simply a concept, don’t waste your words on me. I will not hear them, promises or otherwise, or find the light, or time, to see your lips move.
Dawn reveals serious wounds, time misspent and misplaced words. Where morning hints of the night before and I may not hear your call, don’t talk to me at dawn, or talk to me at all.
Ravaged by rain tormented and tortured with nature’s harsh breath Skin torn away and hanging a mangled skeleton left for dead in the gutter an umbrella alongside broken bottles matchsticks and cigarette butts a spent condom salt and dreams washed away with the rain Items which once served a purpose now used or used up no longer of use Servitude sins and secrets susceptible to societal ways Disposable Obsolescence Everything once had a purpose or a reason or an excuse Now all but forgotten until it rains
“If you want to win the teddy bear, you have to break the rules.’
Advice from a panhandler, a regular, outside one of two coffee shops. People come and go, tedious ebb and flow of those getting by; life in this city.
Daily she is here or there, barely warm coat, hands clasped in prayer, paper cup and her frowzy blanket.
Where she sleeps is often a wonder; women’s shelter a block over, or congregated rooming house. Downtown. There are many not far away.
‘Any spare change, anything helps.’
Passersby, some smile, others won’t. Many don’t look down. Not everybody stops, not everybody walks on by. A quarter or two, a coffee or crumpet. Here and there.
More or less.
‘God bless.’
Slight smile from an everyday face that has braved cold winter winds, scorn and rejection. Her life harder than the dirty concrete where she sits. Every day.
Empty stomach. Little promise. Few possibilities.
Some other day. Some other time, the world was different.
So was I. So was she.
Society does what it does.
We rarely know who breaks the rules and do not question those who make them.
