Beggars All

A poem comes in disguise like a beggar in the mall. Some sit and look pitiful and can not meet your eyes. Others have a story, "My sister's fatally sick in Ukiah, please help us we've run out of gas." Some poems work subliminally, you wonder if they might be from another world. They stand in busy walkways and chant "spare change", under their rancid breath, seemingly oblivious of you. Some wear their sign that tells their life, a life that might be yours. Others affect an air of casualness as if they were your best friend, "Say, you got a quarter?". And then there's the one in whom you sense such doom and menace that you have to cross the street. You drop your metaphor in the cups, because you never know whether any of them will work for food, whether any will really work