Salvage

Where is your self-esteem? Languishing on a street corner, face reflected in a drunkard's puddle of spittle and piss. Where is your self-esteem? Lapping up a lap dancer's lap on a sawed-off stool, short changed bouncer beating a dull drum roll of out-of-control madness and primal rage. Where is your self-esteem? Left behind in a mother's womb? Abandoned like an orphan's heart? Find it in the inebriated spirits of whiskey and rum. Find it here: the last cigarette of whetted tobacco in a desert wind. Damaged nerve. Inflamed liver. Find the esteem of the dead man. Obituary of his success in pictures; two column accomplishments. Scion of a concert pianist. Progenitor of a ballerina daughter on New York stage. But where is your self esteem? Cold night with a newspaper blanket. Spittle and piss frozen, a mirror of yellow and white. Take me to the shelter, nun of the moonless sky. Blue habit, white smock. Warm blankets to my touch. Hot bath to my skin. Steaming dish of frank and beans. The rising hope of religious prayer. Whatever rises to the atheistic God who believes no more in the soul of man. Is this your self-esteem? Find it here. Find it here on street corner of broken men. Backwards, too. Saturday morning cartoons and childhood days, when esteem was Captain Crunch and Sugar Crisp. Friday nights now. Billy clubs and drunk tanks. Bear like men growling into the dank air of underground cells. Self esteem come to me in warm blankets, a prayer, a nun's gentle words that salvage an old soul.