Will To Forget

The rains came gray (as they always do)
and hard the torrents were,
he sat mute in a single room above
the crowded honking street with three
or four days of beard scribbled
across his crusted bloodied cheeks

and you suspended in sky above Tampa
read your vapid magazine and washed
your soul blank and clean of this high
crime with no discernible victim.

Smoke smelled of leaf and fire
twisted towards the ochre ceiling
where invisible words claimed
their prey between the splashed
and splattered crimson salty fluid.

The broken down door confessed
and sputtered its crossed out venial
sins as the man drooped limp
in the torn and faded chair

and outside the smeared window
fresh plump figs and lush canaries
sang their fruited mystic song.

The silver plane slid down
the third world runway in black
and oozing mud you’d this long
dreary day gladly call
your own.

And so the world's wheel turns
but never seems to learn,
and so the first wild fire
thirsts and burns
and burns
this gurney
of shame without
a human name.