Tale From the City

The cob webbed city sticks to my dirty skin, as I pass through its predator strings. On the corners are hustlers, men with wigs and worn heels, selling their wares, fighting with women, over property rights. Traffic moves slow, crawling along like a large slug, melting into the blacktop. Your eyes get accustom to waves of heat, rising like dragons from the burning street. The musky smell of filth singes the air, while old men linger by drug stores and bars, smoking old cigarettes they found, coughing. Hey buddy, do you have a light, some change? Still, I'm alone. A wanderer, born from tainted soil, surviving on wits and will. Stopping at every liquor store and chili parlor, searching for pennies. Knowing each minute as a day, as I stick on the soles of society's shoes. A reminder they don't want to see. That young is old when left to fend for themselves, and evil is a weapon never born from a gentle touch. Gray days are constant, as life becomes motion with unintended reasons. Stopping long enough to disappear in the city's web. People passing by see only dirty shoulders and backs, leaning against graffiti walls, trying to stay out of the rain, until the doors open and the soup line moves. It's there I feel human, before wandering back, to my rags and cardboard. I'll try to sleep away despair as humanity passes by, with their cold collective misunderstanding of misery and pain, carried on the backs of the unfortunate homeless, as we lay in the garbage of society's world, crying without tears, holding on, until we just let go and fall into the abyss, where our bodies are then removed as Jane Doe. contest A Poem Time Forgot