A light mist of rain,
silent, ethereous,
falls to rinse thin, sharp-angles
on his face.

He picks up
the pace
and tilts his head to the wind.

Past the plundered slumber
of crumbled poverty. Architecture,
abandoned,
by mass acclimation,
to feral sounds,
as creature feet scratch,
dragging blood-rough nails,
across the cracked concrete diasporas of history.

Past playground echoes
of PS #59,
as they drift through the faded
asphalt haze
of time.

Echoes ring true
from elemental bones of hope,
children,
breaking out and through
the gunmetal-gray,
graffiti doors,
to saturated heat of inner-city rage.

Past gothic orthodox
cathedral masoleums
which sit
like repentant ancient stoics,
who stare,
with burnt-amber, azure, crystalline-blue,
stained-glass eyes,
focused out,
with still a kernel of eternal
mustard seed hope.

More pure souls
must come,
again, to warm
the cold
sacred and vacant,
rare and endangered,
hand-crafted
Lebanese,
cedar of Sinai pews.

Past the Puerto Rican market
where the pig's head led
the carnivore parade
of mastication promise
every day,
in this meat-market window
of letted-blood.

Reminiscent
of Amsterdam whores,
their extravagant wares
on display,
to customers outside
who stare inside while standing there.

He comes to the dust
of an empty lot. He stops
to watch
a woman who wears
a ratted fox-tail wrap
around her neck. She holds
a long un-filtered cigarette,
loose, between two fuchsia painted lips.

She wears
a black velvet hat
with veil
to her nose
and a straight black dress
that flows below
her knees, mid-calf,
above her high-heel, shiny black,
patent leather shoes.

He can almost see her through the blur
of chiaroscuro choreography,
his mother,
kibbutz with Kazakhstan
neighbors,
in a dream light memory.

The multi-plex, subsidized project,
where he was born,
once stood
just beyond his vision
of a mother's visit
in high-heel, indigo, tangerine,
sibilant sounds;
lit with electric light smiles of denial.

She would hold her ciagrette
between fuchsia lips
and wear that ratted fox-tail wrap
until the cancer cough
began to spew Chesterfield blood,
on the molted fox-tail head
of her beloved fur.

Then one night
she went to bed.
Went to sleep.
And died.

Pigeons cooed on that quiet New York City night.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/21/2009 08:50PM by easyeverett.