On the Street

Don’t you know that death comes

with its shallow breaths,

with its dark moonless steps,

and silver bells that sound like wind

and an old worn-out drum that beats

like the heart of an old man?

Haven’t you heard the empire of darkness

speak to you through its sullen iron atmosphere,

through its torrential acidic silence

spanning the void between fatigue

and blood beneath the roots,

through little heartbeats sounding

in the winter street?

And every day another fat, black,

thick-winged death enters the crumpled,

the piss-soaked, the malnourished,

the hobbled, the tuberculin, the stabbed,

the overdosed - like a short lance

into the face or neck until all are consumed

by their daily ration of death, until living

becomes dying in the whimpering night

and the swollen tongue cries,

screaming words that become a fading tale