This was just an experiment
a try out for the main event.

Who else could make the cut
but those whose clothes hung
from their backs
and sidled along the railway tracks
buffeted by the passing trains,

pains and gains and somewhere there
a smile to knife along the frigid air.

Monuments in Timbuktu,
books
and who can read them now?

Trials and tribulations run like blood
from ruptured veins and stain our
histories,

I drink a cup of Lapsang souchong
picked from
the wrong side of the hill
it's
still as bitter.