... (XXI)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P70BOMd1XAc&ab_channel=Grrubb

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And while the homeless kid

Stops me, at the gas-station,

Motioning as if

To ask me for a square,

But instead, positing a nervous question,

Asking after what happened to my hand.

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And while I tell him it was long ago, and lie,

Saying I don't think about it very much -

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Because all he wants is to hold my attention, long enough,

To ask for change

And by virtue of making a small connection

Garner, at least a better chance, of earning some success -

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And while he does this - feigning sympathy,

In a cold, broken attempt at acquiescence -

And while I motion to get away, glancing, briefly,

Into the damp lengths of the street,

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I can't help but look him in his eyes

And see my own, empty expression, mirrored

In the sad shadows of his face.

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I see them wondering after my dad,

In his getting old, in his fearing the end -

Or worse still, in his fearing that the end'd fall far shorter

Than I think in life, he'd ever thought to expect.

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I see my brother and I, as kids, 

I see love, and heartbreak, wreckage,

Scars left by this world's ambivalence;

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I see packed chairs in a candlelit room,

Tucked into a tight circle and crowded

By silhouettes of bowed shoulders,

Resignation, and abandonment; 

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I see the shallow cuts in his lips,

The blackened marks on his cheeks

And wonder after all the beatings, he, 

On all our behalves,

Must've thanklessly have had to take.

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And as I suck back on my cigarette,

Begging, inwardly, that he doesn't ask that fateful question:

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"Do you think any of it really means anything?"

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I tell him, again, that it happened long ago

And waywardly

Wave my hand towards the sky

As if to offer him, something, 

If not someone else, to blame.

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And, in the wallows of a short, shared emptiness

And under the same shared sense

Of causality, of casualties, of pointlessness,

I feign the flighted pretense, of my own escape

By demonstrating the futility 

Of walking away, with nowhere to escape, to,

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Under a sky that doesn't exchange

Conversation, for change.

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