A nasty drunk died to himself
To his family and the world one night
Stumbling into darkness on a well-worn path
Tripping over a buckled concrete sidewalk
Following Arlington Avenue's fault line
He fell face-down but landed on his hands
A kind young woman shouted across four lanes of traffic
"Hey are you alright?"
"Fine", said he, continuing apace
As though not impaired, as drunks
Are wont to do, but thinking it was Her,
He spent an evening getting drunker in Berkeley,
And returning by the same long route,
At Shattuck Place
Stopping for just a moment to hear a toothless
Woman with a shopping cart full of her homeless things
Camped outside of Safeway say to him,
"My whole family was murdered".
So she said with a slight smile
As though she might be lying
But she was was old, beautiful still,
Oh, so good
"I am sorry I can't help you" he said,
Giving her five dollars, walking off sobbing,
Feeling ineffably great and sad,
Stumbling back on the dark avenue to Kensington,
Haunted by thoughts of separation,
Murder, loss and liberation all
Roiling in mind, a burning acid soup of sentiment
Pausing along the way on weathered concrete steps
Putting head in hands
Tears soaking the cuffs below his wrist
Then staggering quickly again for miles
Untucking his tee shirt to blow nose in it
Finding the way to Ewam Choden,
Then sitting in the old basement shower
Warm water and snot dripping
Below nose upon lips,
Realizing the futility of miserable self
Fearing the great river of birth and death
With so, so many mother beings in it,
"When will they all be happy" he asks rhetorically,
"Would that be enough?"
Thinking this again and again
Sitting anonymous in the endless noise of water
Wondering if he might soon pull out
Of this deep pit.
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