A mallet is a tool. It can put you to sleep.
Ice is a mineral. It can put you to sleep.
A sponge is a lacing that can lull you
into the warmth of sleep. It’s not hell.
String, who would think string, but then
they’ve been stringing them up for forever.
Rope is a lot of string. In the park, well,
that’s a safe place where they find a body
once a week. You can pick up a packet
of information from the hive they call
“Social Services.” They fought over salt
and land. They fought for sea-lanes.
They fought to be free to read any book
over the midnight oil, and they fought
for oil. I don’t know what poetry is
in their hands, or who they are. When I
look to see, it comes up blackness.
If I listen, it’s the cacophony of alarm
where there were rustling leaves
and crickets. The air tastes as if it
came from Congress after an all-nighter.
Who wants to inhale the underside of
all the beautiful city architecture?
You can smell the bacterial mud, the spit,
the phlegm, the bad food and camphor
of urban America. But you can’t touch it.
It dissolves as you approach, the crowd
scatters to let the lucky ones through.
What you couldn’t reach while alive
turns up in the parks, under the trestles,
down at the river and over the grates.
They are selling their kidneys. They offer
their bodies because they want to live.