christmas night, 9:45 p.m. show

the way,
and the alley way,
every brick,
slab of concrete, or limestone,
marble, dying snowflakes,
birds and the dogs that eat them,
benches, rusted pipes,
all of it, the inner city, my inner city,
not a maze but a way,

but she is all angles and anger and she does not whisper
oh no i need that softness those curves those
voices simmer like summer and pour
sweetness into my ears not the

roars, machines, foghorns,
seething fumes, the smoke, bodies,
rotting feathers, or corpses, mud flats,
sewers, shadows and trash cans,
whores out for drugs, druggies out for whores,
revolvers or knives, steeped in blood,
and smelling like sex, reeking of it,
in white-powdered noses, and
every day it snows, but

the women who pull me don't drag me let me in let me be
a man who breathes really breathes for once
a man a real man who dies and is afraid
and who will drown someday

but i can't have that.
inside me i find it,
the way,
the alley way,
and the rooftops, and the balconies,
and the cast-iron gates —

my city screams.
i feel her.
god.
i feel her.