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
[...] Read more
poem by Norman Santos
Added by Poetry Lover
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