"skyscraped" poems
Striding down a Chicago sidewalk,
under the El,
I came across a croaked rat,
splayed out on its back
with a surprised expression,
amid rocky chunks of construction debris
apparently dropped from the skyscraped heavens.
Had it been scurrying about,
the vermin would have startled, menaced,
repulsed on a visceral level.
But in the stillness and repose of death,
the taxidermied-looking rat
came across as sympathetic,
an unwitting victim of a random fate.
It could have been any of us.
Its eyes bulged, its limbs seized.
I almost stopped and snapped a picture,
tweeted the tragedy out,
before thinking better of it.
People instinctually reject rats, like clowns.
I thought about scooping the piteous corpse up
with an alt weekly, tossing it into a dumpster,
giving it a little dignity. But I was in a hurry
and it was just a rat, after all.
Pounding the pavement with purpose,
I did a sign of the cross,
and prayed a little valediction.
Apr 11, 2018
Apr 11, 2018 at 3:20 AM UTC
skyscraped skyline quarterwhite
in morning light mourning
the ritual passing of the night,
the city by dreams wound wakes mechanical-like,
preprogrammed as the rising of the sun,
celestially powered
cars trains buses, everyone—
gears turning—
scurry scurry to gets things done.
Oct 12, 2022
Oct 12, 2022 at 6:45 PM UTC