19th Stupefaction Blues

Photo by Roland Cartagena on Unsplash

feeling like a cigarette butt
ground out on the street
trying to find the boot
that stupefied me.

some bad ‘ol boot, lord,
done gone stupefied me.

up in a high-rise window
there’s skeleton women in Victorian dress
playing violin for a city
full of burning trolley cars;

i sure do wish
she’d tone it down
before the pigeon man
makes his rounds

because that pigeon man
don’t leave no feathers
in the flesh.

but there’s gold dust
in the storm drain
pocket watches
in the pond

lips tremble
water-glass reflections;

whorls in the wood grain — ancient runes
secrets embedded in the forest
long before you realized
you were born.

dancing in a pinball-machine graveyard
there’s a shriveled-up piano on the runway.