city poem

looking for inspiration
in other people's writing
i came across a small alley
which i had never seen before.
a shadow, really, of the building it lay behind.
and there was a signpost,
a very old signpost,
that read "Old Brick Alley"
and by old brick
i knew that it really meant
abandoned ideas-
broken window ideas taking stones from local ne'er-do-wells
rhythmic ideas that had somehow shifted time and key
a cacophony of failed symphonies,
ballads, and commercial jingles
feral mean street-cat ideas
that bit and slashed as i held them at arms length
(they knew they were no good, doomed, built to sleep on the streets
without heat or food or any hope of being understated, refined
progressive members of society)
when all they needed
was a bit more of my brain
(oh, how i'd love to write a book
with claws
that cut and burn at the wrists
of anyone who picks it up,
snarls and spits,
draws blood and likes the taste,
but is beautiful and peaceful and perfect
when asleep)
and this Old Brick Alley
when I walked past
revealed to me
a secret-

at its end,
beneath the glow of a tin covered light
and dancing in the gun-shot shadows
of moths wings
was a rust old garbage can,
with a lid that was ajar.
and leaking from that garbage can
was the promise
of recognition,
of another world,
of a sapling that might begin to transform
the old bricks to soil,
the old alley to meadow,
the old city to a forest,
and all i had to do was look inside
and the lid was already ajar!

but i kept walking-
i even pretended to not turn my head
and when i got back to my apartment
i smothered my curiosity
with an old, heavy
down pillow.

________________________________


mimicry is often useful
a tool for survival
crafted over generations
and costing a hundred
or perhaps a thousand years
of misbegotten ancestry