Poetry
This Purgatory Place
This street is the most tired of all the tired streets
and this house is the youngest of them, too
I wonder what that says about those who’ve settled under my roof
lazy?
late?
left behind?
next in line, perhaps, to dine with solace,
to inhale anything in the stead of your suffocating absence
as down and out as we are, we stay indoors —
inside the lines of our comfort zone “homes,” a euphemism oft dropped on the streets we these days avoid
because of disease, of course,
or at first, at least
but now there’s so much risk
to anything and everything around us
we’ve added the sun to things labeled “dangerous”
I hide from its rays to maintain my complexion;
this pallor accentuates my seasonal depression
I’ve become photophobic, too, over time,
and each blast of the sun’s fire
detonates new tensions and terrors
so I tiptoe in dusk, and I tiptoe in dawn;
I stay in shadowlands if I must move…
