There was an armless man biking on an empty street,
When the bell tolled at the midnight hour.
Between the emaciated ribs had stench diabolical
Everyone called him crazy.
A phantom of the city, he is. Perhaps, death himself.
A trail of breath. Ragged bandages barely hid his nakedness.  
Burnt was his hollow eye. Disfigured was his nose.
Like a disgraced soldier refusing to come home.  
Man, said who? How terribly mistaken!
The boy was only twelve!

Through a broken glass window of a beat-up car
Saw three whisperers an army of fanatics of midnight chase,
Blaring red and no blue.
“Why y’all here, brother?”
“Innocence. Innocence only”
They ain’t here to catch us. Too many. They are here to **** us.
Bullet holes on the car doors, motionless organic bodies
Blood on the concrete and
Silence, after all!
  
A foreign couple walked on the street.
BAMM! The fallen! A suicide!
No, it was the poor armless boy!
Help! For God’s sake, Help!
Curtains closed, yellow rooms unlit  
And nobody gave a single ******* look.

I ripped out of the old tavern
Into the torn indigo overcoat
And traveled under the porticoes of a billion fantastic stars
To celebrate this marvelous November night.

In the labyrinth of bricks and stones
I hum and whistle the Irish song
Like a singer before the orchestra, my multitudes.
How exquisite—Avec un plaisir de génie—is my peripatetic existence!
Lungs full of air, and I see the Muse in me.

My treasured newsboy cap from a thrift shop spins on my hand,
And my feet bubbles off the floor like soda pops.
I pray my gratitude to the one above the altar
For my indomitable freedom. Amen.

A pocket change rolling, bikes uninhabited, and lampposts perpetual.
A rolled cigarette wantonly leaned between my sticky lips.
Autumnal dews wetted my forehead like spiriting wine.
And while, scarf blowing, boots tattered,  
I raised my odalisque eyes heavenward
The world pixelated above my moist eyes
Like a seabed of jewelry stars