Urban renewal

Each morning
a man weathered as the street
argues with himself, paces
out in front of the corner Walgreens
in a state of perpetual motion,
as if in stillness he would disappear
into the heaped refuse, his breath
fading into the steam of sewer caps.

Another
in dialog with phantoms,
black cord trickling down
from his earphone, undulating
as it traces the faint path of veins
buried deep
beneath a cashmere overcoat sleeve
uniting him
with cell phone, through ether,
to a reality displaced.

With a precision mechanical
he discards some loose change,
the hollow clink of coin against tin
going unnoticed, as the snow
blanketing the statue of a man
blindfolded with black plastic sunglasses,
tin can in hand.

A fixed point of reference,
an obstruction
in the ebb and flow, his wheelchair
the completion of body and bridge
spanning the distance between us,

between myself
and the complete stranger who
rides the train with me, shares
my seat, my breath, grinds me
with her fur coat as she struggles
with Gucci purse, Starbucks coffee,
and bottle of Xanax.

The distance we keep
from ourselves, confrontation,
the barren woman
who works the crowd each evening,
eyes like glass contrasting us
with our own reflection, needing
only a little milk for her AIDS stricken child.

The puncture wounds on her arm
mark boundaries unspoken,
a ragged edge
stitched to the patchwork of daily life
in this renewal of urban decay
this landscape of glass and steel,
cigar stubs and food stamps.

 

The places in-between

Huddled in the distance
the silhouette of skyscrapers blur
one into another through exhaust stained air,
yellowed like the nicotine tarring
of bar room windows

intangible,
as if reaching for it would disrupt
a delicate balance, exhaling
would scatter it like ashes.

Opposite
the train tracks stretch to infinity
leaving vacant warehouses,
their burnt out windowpanes staring,
for the uniformity
of lawns grown like shag carpet,
the idyllic surface
whose tension we dare not break.

And in-between,
sharp flashes of sunlight lash out
from abandoned liquor bottles,
hard, bone-dry, each one drained
of the sweetest oblivion you can buy
for the price of a couple packs of smokes,

bleached asphalt streaked with tread marks,
beaten into submission
with Nike clad feet and territorial colors
sprayed like blood.

Tattered streamers of plastic
jitter in the wind, grocery bags, food wrappers,
remnants of someone's day, proof of their existence
caught in the barbed wire
looped round the tops of chain link fences,
the undeclared flag of this marginal state.

 

Truck stop a.m.

Six packs of sugar can't subdue the bitterness
of stale truck stop coffee, too weak
to cut through my early morning haze
or make the Egg McSomething
anything
easier to swallow.

Only a few hours killed
of a two day ride and the skeletons
of south Chicago steel mills
have already faded
into this waking dream, this living,
dying in a dream

like the middle-aged mercenary
not ten feet from my breakfast table,
knuckles white,
tight round his plastic gun blasting
digital Arabs in a red-faced glory.

With a grunt and spasm
of electronic noise his manhood
is quickly spent, sticking
to my clothes like the stench
of cigarette smoke,
empty toy gun clicking.

He leaves only tire spit gravel
and a bumper sticker anointed
with flag and tired slogan,

These colors
don't run.

Neither did miss twenty-something,
not at first. Her photo
xeroxed past recognition, never once
thinking her life could be reduced
to a scrap of hope
taped to the restroom mirror,

never thinking
her eyes would meet mine
or countless others
indifferent
stopping only to piss
their daily journey away.

 

[END]

© Francesco Levato 2002