In Vagrantus Veritas

image borrowed from bing

In Vagrantus Veritas 

He awakened at first light

as a commuter train rumbled by

on a parallel bridge, and found himself

distracted by the strong fresh oder of feces--

Christ, Billy had taken a shit near his head this morning,

then packed up and boogied, heading for the Mission.

He was lying alone on a steep slant of the riverbank,

knuckles deep into the urine-soaked soft dirt under

the bridge, listening to the river making soft 

gurgling noises as it slipped under the

great green girders above him, while

traffic busily pounded and slapped

the bridge deck.

The sun broke through dozens of steel meshed rectangles 

creating a squadron of morning rays that lined up in 

close order like reluctant soldiers clear across the 

wide lethargic gray ripples

as he sat up and stretched, unclasping his filthy pea coat,

the last remnant of his service to his country. He had a

penchant for real wool, for it could capture the true 

essence of the person wearing it, sweetening

the sweat, breathing as he did. 

He reached deep into a shirt pocket and pulled out a yellowed

photograph, unfolding it carefully in his dirty fingers and 

stared at the image of his ex-wife, in her red bikini, 

sitting seductively on a cushioned swing 

on the deck of the house he once owned 

while inhabiting a fake utopian daydream 

that would morph into a dystopian nightmare;

becoming the person in rags he presently resided within--

dysfunctional, divorced, desperate, masterless,

jobless, homeless and hungry, a mock

menace to society, a fringe dweller.

“Good morning, Esther,” 

he hoarsely whispered into the hot wind,

habitually embracing his quaint custom

of greeting his past as if it could hear

him, as if someone, somewhere

cared.

“What’s for breakfast?” 

he inquired while rolling up his tattered tarter sleeping bag,

and tying it onto the top of his slashed up back pack, 

then walking to the edge of the thick vegetation 

growing on both sides of the bridge, he urinated 

on some blackberry vines that had been heavy 

with gray-brown dust, looking like dead 

herbarium residents, smiling

as their true green complexions appeared

in the steaming puddles of piss.

“No, honey, you just sleep some more. 

I will fix my own breakfast.”

He fished around in the bulging pack and extracted a kid-sized

red box of raisins, and stuffed it into one of his unbuttoned

shirt pockets while pounding the bridge powder off

his clothes, then swung his heavy pack onto his

broad shoulders and walked stiffly out into the

brightness, squinting into the feral face

of that day’s potential. 

Glenn Buttkus

August 2012

Posted first over at flipside records
Posted as well over at dVerse Poets OLN58

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