Two doors down
from a bar
two people,
strangers to me,
sit in a doorway
up on sixth street;
Wearing winter caps,
winter coats,
even though,
I’m sure they know
it isn’t winter yet,
but it’s so cold.
They have each other
as they sit in separate chairs
leaning together.
I wanted to give them
a dollar or some food
but they are sleeping
and I know how hard
it is to get good sleep
in this life.

If I told you they
were children
would you care?

If I told you
they were women
would you care?

If I told you they
were white men
again would
you care?

If I told you
they were black
brown skin
would it matter
At all?    

If I told you
at one time
over fifteen years ago
I slept on a couch
in a hallway
in a building
with cracked
and shattered glass
windows that
let cold winds in.
Cuddling next
to my oldest friend
one head poking out
at each end
from under the thick
sleeping bag I had.
Fully loaded for winter,
except between us
we only had one ski mask
and one pair of gloves,
so we switched off and on.

If I told you what was wrong
so you could find what’s right
how our lives our deeply intertwined
and that this soap box is yours
as much as it is mine?

Would you take the time to see
and help the myriad of yous and mes
that are still suffering,
no matter what they look like?

I'm the type of person
That if you never declare your love for me
The way the sun shines it's love on the flowers
Then you will never know what it's like to smell the roses
And I will never be able to tell you
How desperately in need I am for water.

I walk the Westside of San Anto,
The place I buried so many.

And the dead do speak
As they are in my words,
My very poetry.

Some have gone decent,
Others waved their final colors
With a kerchief ,now rest immortal.

So then I go back for them,
But move forward doing so,
To remember where I am
And where they shall never go.

If I am just a lucky guy
Who made it out alive when so
Many could not,
Then I cannot regret because the
Dead have no memory.

But why go back and visit
The desolation, the addicted
Nocturnal, the names who have
No faces?

Because I cannot reject myself,
The pistol I once lived by,
The nature of air and hope that
Escaped all in the ruins.

No, I will always return,
And my heart has not the words.

Now what?
Flowers for the dead and walk
The slab of names to rejoice
In what once was?

No, I come home,
The same as you,
As anyone,
Superfluous as this may be,
The return is necessary
If only to find oneself again.

Somebody bundled
it into a clock
and slung it up high on a wall,

with numbers
like bars between us,
where there had been nothing before;

before,
my days had come open,
open and endless like sky,

but boxed on the wall
there looked no room for all
of the rest of my lifetime and I.

The city spreads
The wild displaced
Some species gone
Without a trace
We move along
At such a pace
We lose our world
This human race

A Trasher sits
Upon a rail
In search of bugs
With flirt of tail
Grey-brown body
Curved blackish beak
He will find
The food he seeks
While he rests
So smooth and sleek
I find the wild
I take a peek
Into a world
Where harshness picks
The hardy ones
In desert sticks
As he peers
With yellow eye
He has his place
Twixt earth and sky


SoulSurvivor
(C) 12/31/2016

The cloth I gave it as cover for chill
is lying still.

Christmas eve was its last night.

Not that I knew
when picked it up
and gave it back
to the cold night.

I'm still holding it
heavy and invisible
on my heart
as my eyes repeat the scene
of crows pecking out its eyes
the head rolling on the earth
eyes closed.

I close my eyes
scared life could be so thin a thread
barely holding
and incredibly uncertain.