Lenity In the Slums
She lit candles
in her empty kitchen.
Burnt air disappears
through the back door.
Pale and wild,
brittle street witch,
shy, wide eyes.
Her mind like a weathered epitaph,
left alone in it's quiet mystery;
but her spirit roams
gentle and porous.
City sorrows like ashes
cling to her rags,
sting her eyes.
Their faces burn inside her
like dim candles
giving warmth
to her own melancholy.
The cafe windows are boarded up.
She walks home
with November chimney ghosts
and a dying sun,
while she conjures visions of love.
Love is the sad hazy eyes
and cigarette swirls
that swallow the haunted dusk ruins.
Old souls in the streets
waltzing across black gardens.
Dazed escapists shedding lonesome
and tired teenage skin.
All their secrets out,
kissing their willow bones
licking and scorching their dirty feet.
The hymns of a thousand hobos.
The wind with it's cinders, bells,
and organ chord lullabies.
Fleeing boxcars cradle drunks
with tangled hearts.
Junkies smoking by fountains,
paint their reflections angelic in the water.
Graffiti stains the walls
in abandoned churches,
where wild haired children
wrote their names.
Misery missed this place.
Love evoked their bone yard to flesh.
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