There can be no banging of pots and pans out on the street
without that metal clanging reverberating up his tattooed
arms. No crazed fan sliding down the greased poles on South
Broad, mouth open to the sky, capped teeth gleaming
in the moon, if he is not here to catch them. If he hadn’t killed
himself, he might be sailing through a sea of arms
down a street of communal joy, all those hands lifting him
up like God bait…but God can’t have him. Not yet. He still
has to feel the slap of camaraderie on the back
of his threadbare t-shirt, cheer his throat hoarse, stand in line
at Geno’s in a backwards baseball cap, Parliament Light
behind his ear, flirt with the girl slopping chopped steak
onto a roll, fall in love, his eyes shining like indigo glass. Still
has to turn up the volume in his old Isuzu pup, conjure
Freddy Mercury, fistbump the stars, champion of the world,
toast a brown bagged 40 with strangers on a stoop,
all of them seized in laughter, despite the funk of urine
wafting from the alleys, the sun that will creep up to illuminate
the sweating trash, despite the temporal ache
of unvaried days, the excruciating throb of the living body.
Photo by nightmareguitars, used and adapted under CC.
