Particular Moments

Crowded places filled with gazes of much un-needed Inquiry:
Curious, tense, lustful, and envious—mostly afraid—
Vexing to the extremities of bone.

Can’t a Brother eat alone
Without getting smothered by cloudy and judging glances?

damn unwholesome souls
lurking rampant on this Earth
so disturb me;
perpetually motivated from outwards, of which’s approval they seek;
must we ceaselessly suck like maggots
and compete with one another in nothing
but creature obsessions? 

Escaping the suffocating boxes of Men (and Women too),
Rows of densely packed Crackles sing like
Stereotypical Hispanic Aunties,
Fast and incessantly energetic—
Sitting on the power lines, they look like
Lines of blotched ink, so morbidly jet black,
That a weak mind may just mistake them
For a bad, bad omen—

and can we stop reducing our fellow creatures
into metaphors of our own mere understandings? 

You see, it might just be a rest stop
Along the journey of their mass, seasonal migrations—
Amongst themselves, a make-shift conference is undergoing.

A slow walk toward less crowded blocks,
Outdated Post Offices and Abandoned Factories,
Peeling Paints; Corroded Metal Beams—
Ironically, at such sights, the soured Heart sits more at ease;
Maybe they remind Us of our lost
But once True Essence,

Now empty shells, waiting to be swallowed up
Whole, down the fat, fat belly of the Real Estates,
and gentrified into “Creative Work Spaces.”

Looking into the dark corners of these obsolete Sentinels,
A pair of dimly gleaming green eyes peer back
in Innocent Caution; a Young Black Feline.

“Hey there, Friend.” You say.

For it is a rare encounter, after all,
On this humid Dusk quickly morphing into total Night Fall,
It is only you and the cat
Keeping Sigil at the Graves, six feet under which
Lay the molding corpses of the Earnest and Industrious.

Eventually, this on-foot excursion ended,
Leaving you atop an empty garage, possibly
Another tasteless fruit of some Real Estate Empire—
The view falls far short of what you anticipated:
Foggy flatlands scattered with boxes containing men and women
who mostly busy themselves glancing at each other.

A breeze blows, but does not freshen your face.

Oh February of 2018,
You stubborn Animal,
Must you so soon leave us empty handed?
I dreamt of more adventures in your bleakness.