"The Death of Gully Hand "
What's madness but nobility of soul
at odds with circumstance? –Roethke
Perhaps,
In a time of loneliness,
After the heat has slithered past
A gravel afternoon and slipped
Into the coolness of the evening's lap,
Perhaps you've heard the sidewalk singers,
Striking single notes and humming
Tunes in strange erotic keys.
Maybe, while walking down a neon
Skirted street, the cedar sweet aroma
Of a freshly painted wall has lured you
Past the shopfronts to a secondary doorway.
A sanguine colored hall where the incense
Smoke and music, hanging in the air,
Swirling with precision smoothness
Up black-mat covered stairs,
Leads you past reality
To a pitted wooden door,
Leaves you standing desperately expecting
Something more, something more
Than moving shadows. Something more..
And the minutes pass unevenly.
They stumble through the alleyways
And grieve at opened windows
Someone left to catch the breeze.
The minutes sound like barking dogs
And feel like whispered wind.
The minutes tease. They end and they begin.
And the minutes pass unevenly.
As sidewalk singers, dressed
In singers' uniforms, the faded jeans
And flannel shirts and dirty shoes,
Huddle in a disinfectant hall
To pay their dues.
Mount Mercy's nurses lead them through
To send them on their way unused.
They walk away in single file,
Across fatigue towards apathetic peace
To search the asphalt for release
And taste the steel mill's sulfur by the mile.
They make an odd parade.
The men and women stare.
With their labels firmly tacked in place
Mrs. Dunham turns from them,
She never sees a face.
She just locks her door and slowly
Climbs the stairs and to fill the space
She mutters softly,
"What has this world come to?"
But she doesn't really care.
We walk away in single file
And stop to ask the children of the streets,
"Where are we now?"
They only look up impishly and smile.
"We've lost our way somehow!
Where are we now?
Where are we now?"
The minutes pass in muted cries
And sirens wailing to the skies.
We lie on sweat stained mattresses
And dream, but we never close our eyes.
For we have burned our coats
And our cotton dresses,
Called to tell our mothers lies,
And now we stand alone to press
Our cheeks against a wooden door.
Perhaps you understand the reasons why?
Perhaps, you've been this way before?
© 2005 beau blue - JJ Webb
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