Politicos stride like
totalitarian colonels.
Professionals lean into
conversations
about cash-flow, internal
control, and impact (a verb).
Winos stand against a wall and
shiver
their way out of hallucination,
their shirt-fronts soaked with
the Lamb's
most inexpensive blood; bums pick
through rubbish
and sleep under news; the mad
testify
to streetlights and themselves.
No one runs for office anymore
except the staffs of those who
ran before.
They govern each other and
whisper about us.
Sunlight remains democratic.
We walk in it together
between the muddy river and the
capitol.
We are lobbyist and lunatic,
accountant and pickpocket,
admin-assistant, tech-person,
plumber,
and Ph.D. student writing about
power-relationships.
I find myself wondering not at
all
about the powerful. I focus on a trembling
hand
that picks through garbage. I
fork over
a few bucks to the hand's person.
who gargles the words, "God bless you."
Somewhere there’s a
photo
of that man when he was six years
old
and squinting at the camera,
happy in a summer
in another state.
Maybe you finally come to hate
poverty
enough to pursue it as an art;
maybe a thousand left hooks in
the downtown gym
finally leave your brain fizzed
like pink champagne,
and you're on the street mumbling
to a corner man
who isn't there. Or somebody
dies, and your way
of understanding that is to let
go the things
that hint of looking forward,
including the grammar of love,
and love of self, and taking tomorrow straight.
Yeah, so, I gave him a few bucks, which
will
go for booze, not a sandwich, and I don’t
care
because it’s not my money anymore,
and as the Capitol might whisper,
it never was.
Copyright 2013 hans ostrom
