Rat City

[DanBierce]

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.

[Silas Thorne]

This is the real stuff, and is it good! There's real poise and balance in the lines, wow!

The first stanza really socked me hard right down to the sweat-soaked floor, and for me anyway, I could get up and stumble round for a few more rounds, that is, until the last few lines, which knocked me right down there again as the world spun around my battered head... No, **** that, the middle lines are great too, reading them again.

'and wait as vocal pigeons binge on crumbs.
Streetfolk are hungry, but not enough
to bag these feathered free lunches.'

Excellent stuff! This also reminds me when I was in Rarotonga. There were small wild chickens everywhere there running free, breeding free, but no one thought to eat them.

[~Sophia~]

Excellent Dan! I loved the "feathered free lunches". The entire poem brims with gritty imagery. The early morning mess of a big city! Like Silas, I too was reminded of the chickens running free in the D.R. though sometimes you'd see someone carrying one...

I also love the impression of "harden this city's rain"! Wonderful painting!

[DanBierce]

Thanks, Silas and Sophia. I appreciate the praise this poem has recieved from you. I wrote the original draft back in 2001, I think. It took 2nd place in the Interboard Poetry Contest (IBPC). I have since revised it several times, and I see a couple of things I still might tweak a bit as better ideas come along.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Perhaps we should all ride on the back of Silas' post! This is like Robert Pinsky laced with Charles Dickens with a dollop of Bertholt Brecht thrown in... but notwithstanding that, it is your own strong authentic voice!

[Pendragon]

You had me at that "mural of fog". Excellent!