Category: Urban Poetry

In the lounge room, hanging, was an air of bitterness and exhaustion. Long hours and unsatisfied desires pressed heavily against his coworkers’ hearts. A pool table with scattered billiard balls collected dust in the center of the room. Phones—only phones hummed. He couldn’t make out the specific sounds, but their muted noises were enough, it seemed, to pull the sleepers out of their shells. One told a joke, pointing at the bright black rectangle, and another faintly smiled. This was enough, he knew. To get them through the day, this was enough.

It was night, he stood by the traffic pole, just a few steps from his apartment. The weight of the day tugged at the nerves of his shoulders causing his back to round and ache. He can drag himself home right now, discard his body onto the bed, but he lingers, a faint dot in a winter wasteland, a cigarette end on the corner of a street. His lungs take in the black ice air, holding it. His heart beats; time is frozen. Then out comes the mist. It glimmers and disappears into the sky like stars behind streetlamps.

Cold buses running
Cold buses with people
Cold people running
Running from cold
Cold running people
People cold running
Running from
Buses with
Cold

—despite everything, I suppose a beautiful day
is a beautiful day.

The ol’heads on the block are playing music,
no doubt memories enshrined in notes.

There are good kids scootin’-jumpin’-runnin’
‘round mothers in nice dresses.

Even the garbage men, rough like crumbled cans,
seem to be shining
under this sun.

The problems aren’t gone,
home still hangs by a thread,
and the night waits in the corner, hungry,

but right now—
This moment of this day—

Things aren’t so bad.

I wonder if this is what it means to seize the day—except
I haven’t dared to seize it,
the day has simply reached into me;

it has pulled out the pain into the light,
and somehow
it doesn’t look so bad, there,

in the sun.