Stolen Food

When a staircase is a fire escape 

  …spiraled, and black cast iron

When a tarred rooftop atop an old tenement is home

  …where two young poor lovers sit, eating stolen food from a take-out Chinese stand

They laugh, they forgot the chop sticks; they pull up fried rice and scrambled eggs with homeless fingers…their mouths feel a rush of  momentary satisfaction… a few seconds of denial of no place to go to…

Their lives like broken feet so they can’t run to a better place…

The rain comes before they can embrace for the night...

In the back of their minds maybe the police will come for the stolen food, or for the break-ins, the stolen goods; or for the hours they prostituted their big city lives to suburban men.

They speak sometimes of these things, like once when they hid atop a building and secretly watched TV through someone’s window…a 1950s musical with endless legs. They couldn’t hear the music. Only those legs…and spoke of hope that someday, someplace, they could sing and smile…and dance faraway through puddles of Hollywood rain…

The shower came harder… they ran down the fire escape with aching feet. They wished they could slide down a marble staircase…but that was for the movies…at least the rice was good, and it filled their stomachs for a short time

 

 

Passing

It was the last of three autumn trees

...rust and golden leaves rested upon frozen ground

 

I lifted my head and released a greyish breath

...my cloudy soul rose among barren branches

 

I felt a sadness...I thought of the passing of our mortal place and time

A second breeze cleared a path of  fallen leaves

 

As I walked along the icy ground I felt a peace at last

...all things pass, I realized...and that is the beauty of an aging place and time

Looking back I heard the humour of three autumn trees....like Three Laughing Monks

 

Closing Time

It was closing time at the One Lucky--A Saturday--

...melodies of memory always played past 3a.m.

 

'Beer Mugs' Moran cleaned the ashtrays, the bartender's apron covered in streaks of beer and ash. The last of two bar stool drunks competed over the same old songs.

 

The man in a worn blue overcoat drank the last of his beer and would always say--"Billy Joel's Piano Man, saddest song ever, my friend."

The man in the black overcoat drank the last of the tonic and gin and replied-- "No, Harry Chapin's Taxi, was much sadder. Two old lovers meeting in a taxi years later. He the driver. She the fare. They never lived their dreams." 

The man in the blue overcoat, shook his head: "Nope, still the Piano Man. Nothing sadder than a bar filled with loneliness." 

 

Beer Mugs Moran switched the lights on and off. The two men took the cue and shuffled out of the bar nearly falling over each other, like wavy glasses of beer.

 

No matter the season, no matter the summer month or winter storm, it always snowed at closing time. The snow always changing to rain as cold as a San Francisco night. In the cold rain the argument escalates as usual over the two old songs from when they were young.

 

The man in the black overcoat pushes his One Lucky friend to the sidewalk. He yells "Taxi". Sue the cab driver waits for his call and picks up her 3am Saturday fare. They drive off, leaving the other man behind. And the man in the black tells Sue again, drive around the block and we'll pick up my friend.

The taxi driver knows to drive slowly, to give time for the sidewalk man to stand up and wave for her as she rounds the corner in the rain. The taxi stops, he gets in the back seat.

"Take me home, " He said, his speech slurred but his line well practised like the actor he wanted to be.

 

The taxi drives only a hundred feet. The man in the blue overcoat, leaves and walks towards his old apartment, above a 7  Eleven.

 

Sue knows her lines: "Years ago, that store used to be a piano bar where he would play." She presses down on the gas and drives the last of her fare another hundred feet.

 

The fare was only $2.50. The man gives Sue a twenty, and tells her to keep the change. He leaves the taxi and holds up his drunken arms like wings on a plane, and one more time wishes he once could have touched the sky.