Crying
I swam beneath a back alley and dived through a bar’s open door. I saw a drunkard’s face—his unkempt brows as wisps of grey; his eyes blackened and forlorn. Another lain on a hard floor. A boozy bile drowns a mouth—I hear a crazy silence mutter.  I see a life as empty as a bottle; a life peeled like a jagged label. It’s pieces swept by a whetted broom along the feet of old whores. I see their fishnet stockings…torn up the back of their failing thighs. I see their caked red lipstick; the desperate plea of falling eyes…their sagging spirits like sagging breasts…I see a woman's sorrow when marked men say no; and others offer the poverty of lies. The poet writes on a yellow pad. He is toothless and old…the pencil is dull; the eraser is worn. He watches drunken men and the aging of human wares. He is anonymous—his verse unread. At night sometimes he too mutters a crazy silence. On other nights he comforts a crying whore.