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Cheap soap, cheap girls,
Strung out there against a bathroom stall.
Swill cheap wine by the carpark fence,
Ruminating on judgments there
As moonlight sifts through the gloam
Of evening, settled.

Noon here offers a stiff breeze,
Stiff drinks, at the crosswalk there,
Washington and 19th,
A musician cries out:

    "Mea culpa, mea culpa,
     Mea maxima culpa."

But all this is fiction too,
While daylight offers no respite-
Passersby fling change at him or spit,
A patchy gray beard, a scent of filth
And passersby, apathetic,
Play darks against reds and blues and whites
There, on Washington and 19th.

Far from here, in Italian fields,
In Bruges, in rouge,
We eye them like you,
Pythons in heat in the steel, concrete jungle
There, cathedrals to our pride,

Artists, 
poets, 
 soldiers, 
  sailors,

Dreamers of what dreams may come,
Of Ebens and Nitzs,
Kibbles and bits,
Singing iambic to the language of blood.