On a stooping street corner,
Underneath the green tallow light of reverberating neon--
Lights that glow along a cardiac meter, pulsing on and off and on--
A stooping street foyer where I stoop like the sunken grey steps--
I can hear the music begin.
It is soft and slow and shallow,
A stream of mist atop the water's surface,
A stream of sound along the pavement.

The jealous pealing lament
Of a shining silver trumpet.

And as the tallow light drips down and splatters on the street--
(I hear the sound of copper coins scattered on the street)--
A single blue-light tear slips down the crevice of my cheek.
O Lawd, O Lawd, Sweet Mercy, Sweet Mercy, Lawd.

The lamps are lit up one by one,
Their empty sockets sputtering screams
Underneath the blinking broken neon,
And the suited white-coat pimps stand leisurely in the doorways
As their women come out yawning and undressing one by one.

Somewhere in the blue silk light,
My whole life came undone.

The women in their evening wear,
Blinking in the neon pulse,
Stare out with listless gazes at the thickening fog
Of passers-by.
There are voices in remission
And deficincies of vision
In the corners of their eyes.
And the men with meaty hands, like statues at their sides--
The men in stark white suits
And cufflinks big as pearls--
Stand with their girls,
Spitting out the ends of black cigars.

Far away I hear
The lowlight invitation of a saxophone.
I am alone.

But behind the blue-light neon,
Behind the undressed women
And the burly men with suits as white as chalk,
And the scattering of pennies upon the sodden side-walk,
The swift dissolving story of a man
Twists its way along the streetcar rails,
And far away the trumpet wails.
The music's invitation,
Its sweet seductive intonation,
Calls out long and low until its echo fades and fails.

My soul no longer feels the need to soar.
I have seen a hundred years and more.
I have poured out a hundred years upon the street,
A hundred fleeting and defeating pulses of a black heartbeat.
I have watched these fettered shells of souls
Walking and straying purposelessly down unending
Roads of yellow brick.
Shells of human souls that wander
Silent and secretive along the cool banks of the canal,
When the night smells of swamp and the fog is wet and thick.
And the night music begins
As the dusky daylight ends
And several hundred murderous faces
Make their way out into the waking city that glows under glowering lamps:
Faces that will become
Rapists, maybe, by morning's arrival;
Mercenaries, thieves, Samaritans
(Or merely angels who have lost their graces);
These faces who will find and bind
Whatever guises their selfish hearts contrive--
Whatever surprises entrance their lidless eyes.

And across the narrow intersection
I see a man like myself, afflicted by some defection
Of the mind; or else he hopes someone will take pity
And cast their coppers at his feet,
So that he might buy another drink
Before the closing of the liquor store.
(Looking close I wonder--suddenly--
If it is my own reflection that I see
Mirrored on the dusty glass door.
But in his wrinkle-whorled hands: a steel guitar.
He is not me; he has something more.)
The old man picks out bars with a broken thimble,
As if by playing he might snuff out the moaning drone of jazz floating along the neon street.
And his voice is carried by a smoky breeze:

O Lawd, O Lawd, Sweet Mercy, Lawd.

A taste of boiled cabbage taints my tongue,
And I retch.

The man across the street lights another cigarette.
We flicker together with the lamps and the bright green signs on vacant doorways.

I dream of a blinking morning as around me the music swells and recedes.
The black tarmac skies peel away,
The grey asphalt beneath me melts into blistering molten wax
That cools in blades and shards of grass;
Some kind of Elysian Field.

Naw.
It hardly makes a difference anyway,
Where I sleep, where I will lie.
My eyes are weary of their wandering
And the music rocks me gently like a sad lullaby.

So I close my eyelids as the trumpet sighs
And lie down quietly to die.

Sweet Mercy, Sweet Mercy, Lawd.

Good-bye.