For Norris, Pessimist

I have avoided laughter,
I have even put sunlight on hold.
I have grown beard and hair
so I can mumble in a thicket.
Past hopes lie in vast pots
around me moldering.
Sins I have inflated
into huge balloons
which rise to obscure
even an eclipse.
Each ache I have focused on
to find its marrow.
History is useless to me
for it must be only mine,
the future equivocal.
And as I sit here
on this bald mountain
human attempts beneath me
in a alley like any other,
my expertise becomes brooding.
I have taken a ragged bite
out of the face of sorrow
and what do I see
what do I feel,
a moot point
that circles round again
in eternal contemplation.

Over Baltimore Avenue

The setting sun burnished with gold
the storefronts of pawn shops, check cashing,
24-hour bail bondsmen,
their gates like filigreed wrought iron porches
overhanging old Spanish streets.
A crooked smile on his face
he did a shuffle
to the invisible sounds of lyre and fife
which stayed with him all through the nights.
In his swirling haze
he had carried on ceaseless debate
about life, death, taxes
in the Four Corner Pub.
He held out his arms
as if begging anyone’s ear
to carry on conversation
that never came to a conclusion,
barely sidestepping the curb
as he crossed the Avenue
where the trolley, he dimly recalled,
once clanged when he was pushed
in his shiny stroller.
Trolleys like dull arrows
along his Great White Way.
Entering the greenness of the park
fast gathering shadows
Cobbs Creek minding its business beyond,
he held up a pint of E&J once more
to toot his magic horn in greeting
the gang of chaps approaching,
a merry band of Robin’s men
slinking across the grass
eyes slitted under caps
moonlight glinting off
their unsheathed rapiers.