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Monster Media 1993 #2
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S&M-17
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Wrap
Text File
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1993-05-30
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3KB
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63 lines
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░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░Lament and Confession░░░░░░░░░░by Charles Hornstein
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Things have gotten smaller
now that I've grown older.
The dead men in torn undershirts
still sit on trash strewn steps
drinking beer or cheap wine while
eyeing the bodies of young
girls that go strolling
on brownstone days.
One scratching his groin
waved a broken fly swatter
aimlessly over his head
as if to ward off some
invisible invader while
upstairs his woman lay upon a yellowed
mattress running her fingers
between her thighs as she looked
at the pictures in a crumpled
wrestler's magazine. At the
Swap Shop a black man
bargained in grunts with the
white proprietor over a broken
chair for his sometimes home
while outside a hunchback
collecting soda bottles sang
Yellow Dog Blues and begged
a nickel for his malformation.
And on Hadley Street my mother's
house stands at eighty years
like any other old man.
In toothless solitude the wooden mouth
is rotten. The shutters are gone
and from a broken window
a diaper hangs in limp surrender.
In the back yard where I
in silence or in rage fought
the game of life junked cars
sit as markers over graves
of grease and time.
And inside, where my grandmother sat
for years a palsied vegetable,
a rat rules supreme over a kingdom
of roaches.
How many times
I in selfish childhood wished
that she were dead so that I
would no longer have to kiss
her shrunken almost male face
or be reminded that life can end
while waiting for someone to empty
a bed pan.
-end-
Copyright (c) 1993 Charles Hornstein