KENMORE SQUARE

The goddess walks on broken glass; the king sleeps in a cardboard room.
Life is cheap but rent is not in the place where concrete looms.
Faces impede and recede like the waves that come and go.
Promises break like lovers' hearts; hopes fade with the melting snow.
And I, a well-fed peasant, step in a puddle of despair,
The dirty water stains my shoes down at Kenmore Square.

 

Shadows stretch longer than most lives; death roams with impunity.
Time is measured by traffic lights blinking toward eternity.
There is no truth or absolute, there is no savior or god;
The only faith is in survival and all else is mere fraud.
It only hurts when we face the facts, so no one ever dares.
Reality is for those who don't live down at Kenmore Square.

 

A man asked me for a quarter, so I handed him some change.
And as the metal clinked in his cup, I withdrew out of range.
Another person ignored his plea, and I heard as he said,
"Alibis and sweet sounding lies are our substitutes for bread."
I never would have imagined, I would live life unaware
That indifference reigns unbound, unchained, down at Kenmore Square.

 

The pigeons know more of abundance than I can ever guess,
While I eat with zeal a two course meal of sorrow and regrets.
Poets starve in the subway, prophets meander through the streets.
The death-toll chimes and the winds of time grind down their souls like wheat.
Shakespeare could live a thousand times and no one would ever care,
If he had the misfortune to have lived down at Kenmore Square.

 

Our lives are not self-invented, but our lives are surely art.
But perhaps you would not understand, being so well dressed and smart.
As you proudly tread the sidewalks, sure of your nobility,
You hide your eyes from those whom you despise with agility.
You may gauge your own importance by your bank account and flair,
But it is poverty that makes the man down at Kenmore Square.

 

I remember when I was younger, my thoughts were so precise;
Now they scurry diseased, deranged, like the sewer rats and mice.
My life seems poorly scripted, a Russian novel with no plot;
The piss-soaked breeze and obscenities are all that I have got.
And the moth-eaten sleuth confirmed the truth as I said a prayer:
"Dostoevsky's governing providence down at Kenmore Square."