It was
the hottest kind of sticky city day,
and the first dark stain they found proved not to be blood
but a cherry ice pop, dropped and melted
from a graffitied window high above.
passersby stopped to stare,
feeding on this subversive tragedy
like movie patrons on popcorn and colored candies.
That bloodstained back-alley's secrets
were peeled carefully away from dank corners and
filed in sterile plastic bags, exposed at last to the harsh light of day.
They were
the ones that are not like us-
addicted to seduction
seduced by addiction
rebels and whores and lost boys and girls
finding their solace where the streetlights end.
To the spectators gaping from a distance,
shopping bags forgotten at their feet,
this was some film noir, some gangland shooting,
some dead hooker in a ditch.
The officers, they have the right to remain silent
but they don t use it-
with dirty jokes and the kind of arrogance that comes in uniform,
they carelessly zip body bags over pale faces
which are not so very different from their own.
We are
only human after all,
but in this plea of innocence is
a tacit admission of insanity-
a shortcoming that leaves us sleepless,
listening to the sirens in the night.
That is so good. Love it, really, one of the best ever. Even better than proffesional poemist...err...people who write poems...
