Soup Kitchen

Peeled potatoes are like the bald heads
Of the homeless on a silent night
Nosing through the trash.

It’s as if the street has parted
The downtown is so empty and still.
Only the manholes smoke

Ducked in the alleyway
Braced against the cold wind.
I’m in love with a girl from Reseda

Whose intentions I was trying to read.
Her stockings were black
As she stepped on a crack

And fell in the rattlesnake weed.
Dante and Beatrice, heads on
Fire in separate cities full of the deprived

Little Red-Haired Girl of the shadows
Dying woman in the arms of some
Hero on the screen, the world is

A pigeonhole peepshow that boots us
Into the abandoned lot to scrape around
A black pot that’s been boiling too long.

Soup of trash memories, your recipe is
In the little black book of the drunkard
Telling everyone he loves them for change.