street angels

 
it’s in these city streets where the pigeons peck around for crumbs.
just a dull gray bird, mid-range between dove white & crow black,
it doesn’t have style enough to put on colorful feathers. but there
are so many, I guess they don’t have trouble getting sex. beauty
among their own, I figure.

I don’t come to the streets looking for love, I swore off it like it was
bad dope. don’t need to be needed, don’t want to be wanted.
sometimes the sex is quick: oral candy in a dark alley, bend-over
maneuvers in the back of an abandoned ‘48 Mercury.

or the girl who can take & deliver a mean spanking. real strict with
a tight collar. she must be descended from Nazis.

I’ve been spending time with a tall, dark-haired woman. she keeps it
long & loose; it straggles, like the sad-eyed soldiers of the lost battalion.
she likes it when I take her to my raunchy digs so she can get naked.
we call her an easy lay. I reckon we’re all easy.

she should be repelled by the patches & scars on my savage body, but
she falls deep for the rough feel of a man, the rough talk. I grab her
with these hands that have dug in the ground to find the tangled roots
of a poem  –  kiss her with a mouth that wasn’t meant to be kissed.

we hit the silks with intent to massacre. we make a mess of the
creaking bed, make a mess of our wet, breakable selves. if I call her
a tramp & a whore, she looks at my eyes, & she knows. she knows.
you can name it love, if love is a dirty thing.

but for all of the dirt, there is something beautiful about us.
we are the street angels…


(Art: Brassai)