Intermission 3: Maybe This is For You

They're never gonna stop.
The flies will come crawling down the walls
like spiders mugs of alcohol in their hands and
fists or middle fingers in the rest; wings buzzing
and fidgeting impatient for flight or inebriation
barcodes splattered viciously across them.
And the squirrels will sit in the trees laughing
throwing rocks at you and your morning jog,
rocks at you and your morning dog.
The cops will be just around the corner waiting
on the side of your building hand on their holster
eyes peeking your death, waiting for the right
moment to apprehend your future, gun-down
your witnessed potentiality.
The worms will crawl out their holes to die in
the sunlight.
The cat will come home at night from where
he rarely says and at the first wrong word or
idea turn quickly around and back-hand his wife,
or girl-friend, whomever the current one happens
to be, and beat her till she screams, beat her
till the child upstairs understands what it means
to conceal yourself into pieces yet still remain whole.
And the whore the bitch another feline will come
home from where she always says smiling as
she takes her shoes off and asks her children
what they had for dinner, God knows they having
to seek elsewhere for sustenance, children bruised
by her lies and sabotage, a faceless red-lipstick
objector.
And the pigeons and sparrows will line up like
the horizon at the table where is hot food, handed
out by glorious hands, and receive their dish maybe
their only dish for the day or the week left to humbly
walk away in THANK YOU and steal what they may
during the rest of the week.
"I am tired..." the dog says and gets to his bed,
begins seating his body, calculated and carefully,
relying on SSI and a green cane to lower himself,
and gets his body to a steady spot, that's comfortable
enough, a veteran who fought in a war we never won and
forever has been treated as the loser.
Dog stares blankly at the world before him for a minute,
seated on the bottom bunk of the bed he shares with another
above him who too may be hostile yet hospitable.
He sits staring there till an older gentleman a
fellow vet and denizen of their place of housing walks
past him and shoots a joking remark at him which
wakes him out of his wake to which he smiles lifting
his head and shoots back his own laughing remark.
And the disabled dogs will sit with their sense of humor
on beds marked with expiration dates bodies honored
by scars and useless medals trying to leave behind the
wars that never ended, just quieted down.
The seagulls will swoop down in their white suits and
rip off the poor.
The ghastly possums will haunt the city's dark places
and crevices brooding for the roq or the needle or
the glass.
And when the fire's burning your town of rest to
the ground the raccoon will furtively appear and look
at you with clairvoyant eyes that say - "I told you so."