I came up the way that grew in shadow looked a tender shoot
but bent pushed through the freeze line in a killing frost
arisen first among its peers then hardened. Taught the way of walking
easy in bad men some can tell some left their teeth
on daddy’s knuckles. Knocked around until the eye is hard
moved unmoving like a gun recoils in a hand
even yet too small to sign a name.
I came up beside the tracks on stacks of plates
washing my way up riverboat stacks sleeping in the hulls
among dark men on plates of iron
in grimy weight pits torn down and built again.
Built again by Virgil in his tongue Cicero
the Caesar too of Gallic Wars blind Homer’s tongue
of Iliad and Odyssey. By Beethoven. By Bach.
By symphony of gun and pen bare knuckle brawls poverty
ghosts of the ****** murderers victims haunts of the poor
ways of the poor addicted captured by my sky my clouds
the mist and mystery of my own personal life.
In late hours dark skies clouds pass almost unseen
yet there the secret conundrum what have they wrought
where they have been? What are they coming to?