I traipse the streets on the Fourth of July
(The buses don't run on Satchelmouth's birthday);
Downtown is empty, but the projects are full,
Teeming into the Seven-Eleven. I roll in
For some snakes, but there is only chaos, not fireworks
And the highest prices in town. A white man
Asks for a quarter, but seeing my guitar
Won't leave me alone, asking if I blow blues in G. I say
"Anything but that key," sparing him more than me.
I pass more homeless lined up shivering outside the shelter
Closed for the holiday, eyeing me as though I were a slave
Not quite worth eating. I cut away, through what I'd always
Assumed was an abandoned city block, only to find a kind of
Solution, a sort of reverse commercial strip where every
Beggar from downtown wandered around, advertising scars
To each other — a paraplegic here, a blind albino there,
An unconscious Indian vet propped up against a slat,
A man with his face torn off talking out the corner
Of his mouth. Concrete blocks broken all over the street,
Trash and plaster everywhere, syringes scattered, not a window
Unboarded, but people everywhere, dealing in alleys, leaning
From dead balconies, mostly silent on this, their day off.
I mingled in with them to an unnamed bar through plywood
Doors. Inside, no music, no pool, just a hand
Written sign — "the first bar in Baltimore" — and a poster
For Thunderbird, a crooked fashion model posing
Dirty and disheveled, dressed in a New York fashion designer's
Conception of rags, smiling "taste the experience."
The place reminded me of nothing so much as a Western movie bar,
With Indians perched like hyenas, an obscenely powerless
Ghost family. Even here I felt outcast,
Without even a cigarette to be hounded.
Soon I would be home, understanding a little better
That Hell is a constant repetition of the same missteps
While one learns the parameters of the trap, obsessed
With getting out, but always unable to,
Seeing only the present place,
Not the pastures at the end of the street.
