I live above the safe injection site.
A naked man threw a rebar spear down my street
The other night. Another shot up, then died
On the stairs of the empty building that’s always on fire.
I scored 1560 on my SAT. Who cares?
A woman dragged a mattress down my street,
Sodden with rain. She gave up in the dark,
Prostrate on the road, with a garbage bag,
Shy of my elm tree. I called 911. No one came.
My country always hated me. So what?
They sell my books at the Harvard Bookstore.
The woman lives with a man behind my car.
They camp a fortnight, then they leave
Behind a field of glass pipes and needles,
And a rain-warped textbook—“Statistics: An Introduction,”
Then they howl back. I call politicians. They don’t care.
My teachers die. My mentors break my heart.
Oh—and a couple has been living in folding chairs
At the foot of my street for five years,
Outside, come any weather, and won’t part. Huh
My Yankee girlfriend left me. My place sucks.
It could use a woman’s touch. Me too.
I tried. I blamed the world. My tax bill grew.
I asked too much, then journalism died.
I euthanized my cat, my dying pride.
Everyone warned me: dreams are dumb, and lead
To having to need to drag down a street
A stupid bag, a mattress, and some sheets,
And pray that there is someone up above
Who wants for me not just less harm, but love,
But love’s for idiots. The future’s fentanyl,
Small-boat air strikes where they kill you all,
Relegating noble streets to hell,
And making good but lonesome men behold
A woman in a road, to see the girl
That she once was, the squirming and the sound
And promise she had been to somebody
A score of years ago. Each side has found
In her an impeachment of the other,
While she cowers by my car. Is this progress,
Like a spear of rebar moving through air?
Sell me on it, I’m asking, I guess.