They come down the road coughing
Up beliefs between cigarette drags
And slight hesitations of who they are to others.
Orange-ish yellow unattractively
Embroiders their chests; they've got their protections,
Their unambiguous vests.
From hazy breakfast drudgery
To night's exhausted rapture,
The play the same stage, the same lines, the same players.
But this is living to them:
Shrugging at the future; believing just because;
Knowing the store still provides overpriced cigarettes.
Their feet rattle on tarry asphalt
As their tools swing away. Patterns
Are in their hearts, their caged, tamed hearts,
Stifling what they want to say.
They built the streets I drive on
As I fight with my nothingness
And I remember they must feel this too,
Just as darkly and definitely as the wheel feels the road.