Saturday, March 16, 2013

This ordinary artist (poem)

In the stillness before dawn
at the bus stop
he sings to the morning,
an irregular staccato
drifting across the blue quiet.

His words meander between violence
and pain,
this rhythmic invocation of:
"pimps n' chicks"
"mah money and mah clothes",
accompanied by the rustle of a plastic bag.

There is beauty
in his strange melodic cries
that live in a transient space
between keys.

He fearlessly sings to his own, private scale.

Shuffling between speech and hymn
he chants, he raps -
for hope, something better,
rhyming to some invisible band.

As he sings
only for himself,
(despite me)
the bass bus rumble crescendos closer
and he is silenced,

then gone,

this ordinary artist.

But his music rings loud in my dawn.
and I am changed

by his courage to sing today.