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I Have Seen a Fellow

I have known a fellow
With a statuesque threshold
For the flipping jabs
Of kerosene tongues
And I had seen him
In so many nights
Under a farcical lamppost
Reckoning the deluging drought
That had imposed his inebriation
With his sordid fingers latched
Into the waist of desolation,
And he was scarcely available
By the maws of the sun
For he is tethered
To inadequacy
And poverty
Of all squalid kinds.

I have seen this fellow
From a distance and he was fine
With his dyed chestnut tresses
Combing the wisps of light
That drifts far from his eyes
Which were blackly tired
Sunken deep in a vale
Dug by his skeptic vision,
And then I looked closer
Into the marred paper
And he was hideous
And grotesque.

He was lean, too anorexic lean,
That the looming sun
Cloyed in a taut metal string
Can never stroke his spine
Slithering in sinewy lids
Thus, would never cast his shadow
And he was seemingly tall
Until he darted through a crowd
And cringed without recoil.

I have seen this fellow
Saunter past the catastrophe
Of pawned breaths
And sycophancies,
Dragging his heels
Through the scathing embers
Of bleak serenity
Juggling abortive things
On his scrawny hands
To dodge the mangling bullets
Of the loneliness
That he can never avert.

I have seen this fellow
Clutch his chest at nights
Tossing a vigorous cigarette
Into the silent bedlam
Of the creeping pillars
Of the elusive vying for
The kiss of the serpent sun

I have seen him strip
His medical uniform down
Clothes off, lights on
Fondling his copper flesh
With the caress of his laments
And his soul shut
The persiennes and swindles
A lion's puissant prowl

I have seen this fellow
Build lofty fences
Of steely open palms rigidly
Shearing the foliage
Of the vacant sky
And likewise,
Subtly pleading
For alms,
And sometimes
Saliently groveling
In a beguiling barricade.

I have heard this fellow
Pray for what he shouldn't,
Rubbing the space juxtaposed
The bridge of his nose
Until the salty sea
Turn into a bitter wine
Of spangling crimson
And the gush of blood
Would sober him up.

I have seen this fellow
Quaver violently
From holding the razor
To swoon the stubbles
Of his clad garden
And from avoiding the halloos
Of the pulsing in his neck.

I have seen this fellow
Watch me watch
A fellow who never had
Anyone looking after
In the massive number
Of his latent breathing.

poem by Norman Santos
Added by Poetry Lover
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