TOLE BOOF

  on confessional summer streets of city
the heat scums in like churlish treacle
in back of the five & dime bodies float by
cotton barely captures the tread of leather
mock they come feasting their eyes the uninspired the unemployed
flesh like twined roe on inelegant hilltables
the full-stomached and the barren
the stubble-gaited and obese
the children hung with guilt and abuse
the adolescent girls swaddled in micro skirts and sons and
daughters of their own walk on
sidewalks forty day flooded with dirt-
dry bubblegum wrappers
and weeping condoms caked with sad
and botched hotdog stands and others hold hands
  watching over out back of the five & dime
clouds scuff in like oldtime washerwomen
scrubbing the spank-new parking meters
and all the cops down at the donut shops
the notary public down to the liquor store
picking up two-fours and molls AWOL from the Junior High
and cocksure dudes drabbed in dead-lettered sweatpants
cruising spinless bars for commandment players
in lungless games of catch as catch can and here
on Church Street
one young woman smiling downtown arm in arm
with an elderly mother set as a seal upon her heart
and all my transepts spires and bells rejoice