Menagerie

The sun beats down on torn fences  abandoned yards, and broken cement  of a World´s Fair stoop               leading toward sidewalks  once walked by prostitutes soliciting  under the noses of millionaires  who pass by the cigar smoke  of a bronzed Tennessee Williams.     I sit 7000 miles from a lifetime  I wish to remember...the words  you could´ve said just as easily,  if not quite so eloquent.  Still  powerless from caged frustration;  beyond control beyond fingertips  or as it seems at least.     Yet, there are still too many dawns  that arrive again without fragile you  shattering my menagerie, glass that  was never meant to last.     The walk to work down once broken cement  on Euclid is cluttered with shops and quiet trees  full of people who care so much! inside glass  never meant to break; to protect them,  the same people the same faces  only names and personalities  change.     I see the same images move past me  as I stand perfectly still.  The abandoned house  of a laywer  who balks  at the city  it´s people  and idle threats.  The churches  All the Churches!  not grand structures  pointing to infinite glory  but sad flat-roofed buildings  decorated with fold-up chairs in lonely rooms  but they have music, food pantries, and Jesus!  And the one light beckoning on the hill  has cancer festering underneath it´s glow.     If all that is left are the echos  of idle laughs of a bronzed Tennessee Williams  blowing smoke in the faces of pretty girls  I compare to you, I´ll keep walking  past the broken cement and blighted buldings  past the restaurants and book stores  until the path in front of me  ascends into nothing.