Canvas VIII

Sitting in a diner too late at night.

Canvas VIII

By: Chase L. Currie

There was a sugar package

                Of hopeless next to the

Standardized white coffee mug

                Of the midnight diner

Where the forlorn

                Travelers to the grave lounge

The dull lights hugged the

                Ghostly fog outside under the streetlamps

Where a lady of the streets hummed

                To the dead children tatted

On her arms from nameless fathers

                They paid for the good time

She paid for the feticide

                Beside her sat a

Long hawk cloaked man

                Of a different death

Waiting for a peck on

                The cheek instead of

A hand between his legs

                Near him in the dumb moans of a hand job

Was a drugged-out youth

                Doomed to the wickedness of her fate

Rapping with a holy man about faith

                God willing

Hope for a life in an

                Ugly world of better

Angels trying to bring

                Heaven to Hell

She couldn’

                Wouldn’

Bare the hate of this place

                She begged for someone to make it right

She didn’ see

                We’ll all are hopeless foul in

Our virtuous blindness

                Close to those pair sat

A lone man with a pen and brush waiting

                On a tattooed goddess from the North

Her life wrapped in ‘Knots’

                The artist hopelessly in love

And I the Poet of this horrible tale of

                Ordinary lives sat

Drinking brunt coffee spiked with fire water

                I smiled at the pen

And the great truth of a diner on

                Christmas Eve sitting with the

                                Broken

                                Lost

                                Forgotten

                                And Damned

These are the people

                Of great stories.