It's calm here
A city with the attitude of a town
"Save the poor"
The words are spelled out
On a building behind the church
There are a few here
Churches that is
In close proximity of each other

I sat at the bus stop
After work
Quietly de-working
De-toxing from your temper
And the threat you oppose
To our professional integrety
Every day you are here.
I snort at the though of you
You're just like my dad.

A man sat by my side
Carefully placed
His beer can on the ground
"Can you read this to me?"
He said as he handed me a letter
I opened it and scanned it briefly
"They're giving you money sir"
"Why?"
"You applied for it and they approved"

You smell just like my dad
Speaking of how my boss reminds me
Alcohol and cigarettes
A boy stares at me in the distance
too young
"Why would they give me money"
"It seems Sir, that you applied for it"

He shruds his shoulders
I get that your memory fails you
With all the *****
That circles in your system.
I don't judge you old man.
You're just a version of my old man.
I get it, life's hard
Wonder what it threw at you
Before you got this way.

Once upon a time
You were just like that boy
Who curiously glues his eyes on me
Just a normal boy.
Just like my dad.
Wonder what will become
Of this young kid
Fingers crossed he'll turn out good
Fingers crossed
*fingers crossed

I can’t help but mourn the frogs, flattened
like Wile E. Coyote after the inevitable boulder
plummets from a great height, leaving him
mashed on the pavement while the Roadrunner
speeds off -  vroom, vroom, beep, beep.

I try to steer around them, but they blanket
the road in biblical numbers during the rain
and it’s like some impossible video game
weaving through masses of randomly hopping life
a certain amount of death is unavoidable.

When I walk the road I can’t stop
counting one, two, five, ten, twenty
cartoon-flat bodies littering the pavement
where I extinguished their glittering
copper and golden-green existence.

Last night, on the panes of every lit window
frogs of all sizes and colors gathered
outside, they covered doors, watering cans
even lined up single file on the coiled garden hose
like they were climbing the ladder to frog heaven.

Through the glass, I admired their rhythmic
throats and soft, creamy, underbellies
one, two, five, ten, twenty
fragile creatures seeking warmth
in the hastening darkness.