honeydunce

To the boy on the corner, eating sky.

Aren’t you full?
wrists runny with nickels pouring,
a crowd of one
galore galore,
juts of vein cresting
a concrete kneel with phone open
crushed pack of cigarettes and laundry smell
the red the bricks turn to flaunt the dusk.

You gnaw around clouds.
Fill the sink with bottle caps
labeled with sharpied dates, to remember.
Evidence of being anywhere,
line of cans on dresser, dusty with tabs popped and
drawers spilling flags you pull on–various sentence enders
like surrender, mating call, deflect and defense.
Never owned a television.
Instead, waits for night,
waits for the pollution left light
the drawn curtains across the street that flash like lightning,
curled up skinny on ledge selling the last pages of novels unread
reaching,
a young woman reading itineraries in the wind
hair whipped ‘cross penmanship–

As sure as one devours scent
as certain as bottom lip on flesh
raise one lighthouse elbow, sway slowly for ships
beckon wrecks with spilled beams,
he hunched in the half-dark singing
“oh sea, oh stranger, oh end–come find, come sting, come carry.”