Shinbone Alley

Moonlight through the chicken wire, humming windowpane,

Lukewarm water gasping down a rusty drain

Big town's in need of mending, street lights make tooth some seams

Denim shadows shuffle in between the beams.

Different strokes for different folks so

Mind your manner and easy on the ethnic jokes

It's a dumbbell curve, your trying to tally,

All the way down to shin bone alley

Streets are metacarpal and flesh of asphalt calm

Buildings rise like fingers from a concrete palm

Yellow lit apartment trickle through the drapes

Windows frame each history hidden even from the fire escapes

Sullen winter sparrow lends wing to expanse of grey

Six-thirty-two in the morning on Thanksgiving day

And the bums they hit their corners, the thunderbird rubs their bones

And the crack addicts stare at the snowflakes zigzagging down to greet jones

Different strokes for different folks so.....

Seven-thirty-two on the same day, your bare feet on the parquet

And the light so papery white shining past the microwave

Knuckles to eyeballs and elbows on the table

Spend the day gazing from the window gable....