Singing in the Rage
 
 

             the thing that eats at me
             is a delicate beast
             a kindly soul
             wandering 
             through gravestones
             I mark terrible memories
             with and wonder
  
             what manner of madness
             do shadows bring to bear
             on open wounds.
             why is the light
             a poor antiseptic
             for germs unyielding.

             if I curse flesh
             forsake spirit
             kill flowers
             crush machines:

             what is left to hold

             sickness or cure
             woman or whore
             fairness or flaw

             what is left to hold
             the attention 
             of rage.
 
 
 

                  Tiny Avengers
 

         
          ghosts ships do not come
          for unchristian sailors
          in their blackest moment

          the elements
          have this priviledge

          justice by force of sea
          is by far the most
          swift and sweet

          all ye whale killers
                   wife beaters
                   whiskey drinkers

          your time is short
          your sentence eternal
          your bodies nourishment

          for tiny avengers.
 
 

                     Stained
 

          stained glass
          stained with blood of martyrs

          humble men
          betrayed by their kinfolk

          demanding reasons
          why monsters walk the earth

          haunt the church
          roam the playground

          hunting sons of innocense

          stained glass
          stained with tears of mothers

          loving mothers
          spat upon by symbols

          of their faith

          no holy book offers refuge
          no ugly curse kills memory

          evil is not such a mystery
          if our prayers are being heard

          are they?

 
                     Subway Student
 

   Heavy breathing in a dark, urine-scented subway is the urban call of
the wild. Another street girl, beaten by daddy, making the midnight buck. 
How I still find room for sympathy is something inexplicable. Maybe  
because I'm one of the few who find her services bring no comfort---to
either of us.

   I confess I never have been too fond of her smack habit. Three cups
of coffee through through the girl last her last john: hot, fast and 
forgotten. She's a trembling mop of cheap makeup that circle her sunken 
eyes, eyes that scream for the next fix. I know the story well and offer 
no food. Street life seldom effects my appetite. A sure sign of sanity 
I must say. My plate is clean as is my conscience. Believe it or shut 
the hell up.

   Her next customer is waiting outside. The usual type: nice suit, cool
watch, married to a wife stiffer than a dead frozen bum on a winter park
bench. And you know, she's bound to get a little extra out of him. Guilt
trips trail these guys like a stray dog all the way home. He breaks a
vow. She breaks another vein. Everyone's got a piece of paradise. But
people are rarely told paradise is a pair of dice thrown against our dirty 
little secrets. Where them dice stop---nobody knows and everybody pays.

   We meet for coffee again. Again I'm buying because the girl is as
broke as the Titanic and twice as sunk. I listen to her tales of acting
school. The better life. The big house. The banker husband. I don't buy
any of this, the only acting this girl is going to do might involve two 
naked guys and a 16mm camera. But even that's a stretch for her, no pun
intended. They test porno stars these days. She couldn't pass one of
those blood tests if Albert Einstein gave her the answers. 

    Every week she looks a year older. The very fact that she is able to
draw customers is a shock. Time's must be tough on married life. I listen 
to her usual stories without comment. A tap on the coffee shop window and 
out the booth she travels to her next fix. This latest john looks like he 
owns Wall Street. She obviously got herself a good referral. Students of 
human nature should stick around here for a good while with eyes open, pen 
in hand, jotting down the true face behind the public mask. In daylight 
the mirror always lies.

   It's Friday night and I'm sitting down eating my favorite two 
cheeseburgers. Coffee piping hot. The greasy-spoon cook walks over to my 
table. This is odd since he hates anyone with an education above 5th grade. 
He tells me she's gone, strangled to death in an alley behind a rubber
factory. He points to a newspaper stand outside and walks away. The
complete story is three sentences long on page 87. This sort of thing 
happens weekly in big cities. Nothing new. You wonder why they even put 
in it in the news. Sometimes the killer's a junkie john higher than the 
Empire State Building. And other times,  a slick-haired, stock-broker 
celebrating a major account. One girl dead a week is not enough to interest 
local police. They need dozens sliced open to ungodly ways in order to be
interested. Such cases can make a career. Otherwise such murders stay 
unsolved. Hookers are the disposable lighters of the masses.

   I wanted to give a statement, out of decency, if not civic duty, but
what's the use. No one cares enough to follow up. The cops crack the
best jokes while standing around a dead hooker. Anyone who gives a statement 
is assumed to have been a former customer or a potential suspect. As long 
the killer doesn't knock off a banker's wife, my words would be as wasted 
as bible in a patrol car. At best this event gives my assignment some 
backbone, a kind of drama missing from the usual cold research papers. 
Her death might make a difference then:  the difference between a C+ and a 
very solid B. I've been through enough these past six weeks to deserve 
anything less.

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