Blind Witnesses

You see a woman walking the streets barefoot.
Poor girl was starving.
Sold her shoes to put a little something in her pipe.
You’ve spent all your money on inebriants
the effects of which have all but washed away
by now and you regret it and will probably
do it again.
What hasn’t killed us made us foolish but
it’s true the saying ‘the only lessons learned
are those in blood’.
A hooker you recognize comes back with a gentleman
she asked to walk her home, over hearing her say as
she walks up the steps “The front door might be locked,
we might have to get in through the back,” shaking
what ass she’s got as she climbs to the gate.

A shrouded Downtown in the distance.
Sky-lights scribble on the night clouds searching
looking for Allah where are you where are you unable
to find Him.

Eventually they cut the lights and you go back to staring
at the people loitering in the streets, cars waiting to take
or give back lives, a drunk that wobbles home and
struggles with the door, trash strewn along the gutter from
here looking like people at a crowded beach, the black
asphalt a sea between you and tomorrow.
Then as always here comes the police helicopter choppin’
around with its sky-light shining from the heavens down
searching for you if not someone always just a block away
from here.
Notice the shadow moving on a roof and the sound of breaking
glass as the towers marking our metropolis cover their heads
with fog for ski-masks.
Your cheap room in a cheap life is filthy no matter how clean
it is and I keep looking back at this prostitute deposited down
the street.
A police car with a scorch-mark on it’s top rolls around the
corner and towards her end and I think ‘this bitch better bounce.’
And since you squashed one earlier you think of how you were told
even roaches have Buddha-nature and the whore finds another
trick to pull out the hat while a silhouette on a balcony lights another smoke.

The building’s hired security guards for all the drunks
and bandits in the stairwell one of whom taught you how
to roll the perfect joint.
It’s things like that help you to survive.
Another burst of activity as I see thieves bust out of
someone’s room a building down from me scattering
through the hallway one up the fire-escape,
the victim running out but too late.

A woman, regal but sociable, is walked to her door by
her lover who holds and kisses her she merging and kissing
him back, lips parting exchange words like gifts and
rehearsed yet painstakingly separate, as if glued together
an invisible hand gently parting them their fingers the last to
let go.
Waving he leaves as she closes the door waving back,
the evening and all it’s moorings moving onward.