POEM | EKPHRASTIC

Takers descend from their towers to the tenement, twisting like presidents fraternizing with peasants.

I don't expect you to read the room when you ignore the Go Away doormat in front of the flats, wiping your feet of fame when your name no longer carries weight.

Did you forget the code to your gate?

Run out of space on Park Place?

Maybe you could read my mind if I hung my brain from the clothesline,

clipping clairvoyance from my annoyance,

swinging the wrecking ball of gall, forgetting your mansion and summer cabins.

Yet, here you are, self-proclaimed superstar, ringing my bell with your bindle, attempting to erect a tent of sentiment, stealing the spit from my lips,

rummaging through the garbage for capital carnage, blinded by the cloudy cataracts of cash, taking gold for granted and an advantage, packing a knapsack to camp in the trash,

sucking a six-figure salary at the soup kitchen, drowning in dead diction, in line licking a ladle, not even embarrassed when greed is garish.

Your moral compass is malnourished, and character can't be recovered by Sally Struthers for the cost of a cup of coffee a day.

Hands on my hips, I'm heckling your hypocrisy, haunting your hilltop house as you pass out heresy on Halloween, brandishing backwoods Bit-O-Honeys, looking down on disaster, hoarding the Hershey's.

We're waterlogged with washboards, and you send down your damn dog, seeking scant scraps, barking at a Blackbird.

Please, let me seat you in the superior section of sin, smoking with the shameless swine deemed divine.

Take these sunken eyes and learn to see.

Pity, party of one, your table's ready.

The italicized words are lyrics from "Blackbird" by The Beatles.