Continuities

I wrote this poem when in the pits of desperation ... no money, and no light in sight ... 2000-types.

Finally faced with his baseness,
Man thinks he understands.
Time spins years and attaches to age.
Life drags its pinkish-white wounded pulp along.
Bleeding the while of tears and sweat and blood.
All is salt.

The air rasps salt into lungs
That burn in stinging cells of osmosis.
The throat is parched and no hand stirs to quench the raw.

To moan is a luxury.
Is to moan for an audience.
To moan for pathetic effect.
Death has no sound.

Dusty dirty salty faces toil in the gathering swirl of paper and broken hair.
The rickshaw puller burns his blood to beg for more.
The worker rips his hand that his progeny survive.
The banker stashes cash away and looks to God.
The unemployed soaks the scene and licks his lips,
And wishes he was elsewhere

All this amid the grind of wheels,
The mindless honks of horns
That wake my child that sleeps on slumped shoulders…
That wake him, scare him;
Remind him that he is hungry, festering, and dying,
And make him cry again.