Harlem Under a Full Moon

Harlem under a full moon

Pill-heads and drunks firing guns at the full moon
Injured orphan children howling at the night sky

Surly vagrant trains
of shopping-carts and trash-bagged hands
trouncing over a fallen eagle in the street,
A snake slithering from its grasp

A strange Italian closing a deli door
to the tune of a loading gun

Shady stoop slummers
firing Molotov cocktail showers
on tricycling-toddlers

Buggled street-merchants
wrapping themselves in Eastern rugs
filled with Lady Liberty statues
and dashboard St. Christophers.

An old bebop-beatnik playing "Bye Bye Blackbird"
through a backwards trumpet
and warming himself with a trashcan
burning with the American Constitution

A blood-soiled American flag flannel waving goodbye
on a cluttered and tearing clothesline of tourist t-shirts
over 125th Street

In a dark corner I can see Langston Hughes,
In full battle-dress of royal blue and hazel cordoroys,
scribbling his face with pearl sidewalk-chalk.
His soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Ragged and haggard junkies fingering the open wound that is the American Dream.