Again Here

Thursday in January. Eleven and after Three.


What is it about this city,
making it so sad,
dousing me in fascination upon gliding entrance?
The ultra-quiet life in a busy place.
It's the same creased faces sucking at crinkled cigarette butts outside their shops like clockwork. Perverts and fancies, with promotional ideas and failing merchandise. Picking up the same used buzz from a crack in the sidewalk.
It's the braided black woman on a stoop, her baby cradled at her feet. Warm against biting worlds or windows with blanket and snow cap, his mother as distant now as she never was in adolescence.
And a block away, on the right side of the street. Where the cars stop honking and manicured lawns hire sweatered poodles to guard glass entrances. The same emptiness for separate cause, and a firm division between the two ways of life.
It's teased blonde hair refilling skewed sugars in the diner -
the grunt and grind of businessman who lost themselves in the scuffle -
that nagging dream of hours late, when we can bury ourselves together and drown against the hours turning shorter
running together
blending, bleeding, blocking beats and moments.
What is it about this city of suburbia, small town, smaller worth, shrinking faces and
living, breathing,
melancholy.