Primal smells first tea & merds,
fevering yeasted meal, the ditch.
Street mute, decayed, made deaf.

i sit on brittle reeds in the shade of my concrete eaves
tight
within my square feet.
i sit on myself & scratch my crotch.
my dead cat swelters in the heat.

Dust settling in the crevasses of my face
i do not think.
i do not.
i mold with memory of moments not done.
But i am not an old man.
i am not old.
i am not.
i sit on brittle reeds & listen for dead echoes of my whispers.

i was born into this as afterbirth.
i do not hope.
i do not.
my hunger rotting in paupers' plot
i limp through measured moments as some pretender to some thing.
Stroking aborted fetuses of dreams.

Heat shivering across my deadscape of peeling shutters & withering weeds
i sit with folded hands,
watching the blind vendor bleed his corner dry.

i am strained
abridged
obliterated
made mad.
my past is of many words.
my future set in the washing of hands.
i wipe my nose with my snotty rag.

by John K. Terwilliger

END

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