The streets are the theme
of this morning's mural of fog
as torn dollar-a-hope scratch tickets
litter a Seattle bus stop
where day laborers,
part-time sailors and I
sit on knocked down shopping carts
and wait as vocal pigeons binge on crumbs.
Streetfolk are hungry, but not enough
to bag these feathered free lunches.
A sixteen-year-old school girl
wears a rouge mask and walks past
my much obliged middle-aged eyes
as soaked gray air melts her mascara.
Blue trickles thick
through criminal images
and the sun Tom-peeps
through the broken pane of a cloud
as Big Band music blasts
from a passing Camaro.
It was the rage
that spiked the punch of music
long before grunge wrenched from a local's
dope-sick gut helped harden this city's rain.