Keep Your Glory

Flashing neon lights of that
corner bar; threatening to extinguish
with every tortured burst of light.
And the deep fried smell of yesterday’s burgers
mingles with soured beer outside the door.

A soggy cardboard scrap with its illegible scrawl
the only remnant of the man, in his threadbare
coat, losing feathers like a goose in molt.
Will he be back tomorrow asking for another dime?

I stumble on the cracked concrete where the sidewalk broke,
that radiating line of jagged lightning, and peer
into the gutter. That once bright slick of oil gleams,
the blood of these streets clogged with the rubbish
of a thousand lives who never stop to notice.

Sometimes I wonder if it would be better to go back
to that exalted position that waits like a gleaming beacon
but up close is tarnished with the soil of schemers and dreamers
no better than these. I want no part in it.

The lone fiddler, busking late on the street to the jeers
of passing pedestrians, asks me no questions. He only cares
about each reverberating note, and making a dime
so he can be back another day. The wino, skulking in the shadow
of another bar does not care who I am. He only worries
about the young punkers, and another harassing do-gooder
whose only concern is to add one more soul to his list.

Here there is no world to save, we save it for ourselves.
Call me ungrateful, but I don’t want that shining badge
you’re determined to stick me with. I am content
with the code of the streets, where having a scar
is only one more facet of survival and no one asks
what horrors you have already had to live through.