All the houses in a row,
the cluttered gutters the color of
wasted tears and worthless winter,
weighed down with gray clouds and
blue sky broken by the paths of
branches, frozen for a moment,
a portrait of intimate longing
bare limbs raised seeking
the blessings of the divine sun,
my bare knobby knees and
slack surrendered flesh exposed
despite the season I sit and
stare at the streets and sky,
sober and smokeless and
spitting every invective known.
I have become that old man,
hollow eyes boring holes in
everyone they touch, scouring
the distance as if awaiting a sign
never to be seen in this or
any life, a Halloween decoration out
so long it serves as a warning—
abandon all hope ye who enter—
poison apple or Alighieri.
Some day you too will fall
heaven pressed into unseeing unseeing eyes,
your prophecies piled on like stones.