A cigarette wilts in a young girl’s mouth
as the sky drizzles on her street corner.
Her fingers weave rainbow bracelets with wicked speed.
Steam rises from the pavement,
clouding a cardboard sign that is braced between
her purple high top sneakers
“Got Ganja?” it inquires.
The bold black ink runs down its face
like tears of the invisible.
It swirls in a puddle at her feet—
washes over slick pavement to join the filth
that crowds a vent in the gutter.
A businessman in a grey-blue pinstriped suit marches over to her corner and slips four quarters into a chipped blue newspaper vendor.
MORE OREGON YOUTH HAVE NO HOME
He lights a cigarette underneath his umbrella.
A voice: “Spare change?”
He cringes as he turns to face another daily unsettling eyeful—
This one’s cropped dreadlocks are artistically gnarled;
The side of her head is shaved in the shape of a star;
Her too-big dirt streaked jean overalls half cover a holey Ramones t-shirt.
The businessman wonders who the Ramones are.
He rummages through his pocket for what can he spare.
Two nickels.
He holds out his hand with the coins pinched tight.
Her eyes turn down, smiling.
“A cigarette will do.”
The businessman grunts, obliges, and tosses the trinkets into her furry guitar case before he skirts away
(Because the bus has come)
Thank God!
The light thud of their forced pity is muffled by cacophonies of voices.
Speech and Sound: the elixir of the anxious breath that is a metropolis.
The metallic screeching of the light rail
The click of a thousand hurried heels.
The shaking of beans in a hackey-sack
The pounding of drumsticks on plastic barrels
The “Yes’s!”
The “No’s.”
“Certainly’s”
and “Uh-huh’s”
The “I can’t, I’m sorry’s.”
The “I can’t I’m sorry’s…”
On a street corner in Portland a girl picks up her guitar.
Its missing two strings but its stickers read like a loud urban poem.
A drop of rain quivers on her bottom lip
as the tip of her new cigarette glows
Fiery Bright.
No comments:
Post a Comment