John-Ward Leighton

Screaming in her wide awake nightmare dreaming
Photo: ©Copyright by John-Ward LeightonA FLY ON THE WALL

On the street today
I was walking but not talking.
Two hooded dudes
of the black persuasion
one checking cars
for a smash and grab
the other doing the
don’t look at me
all the menace for me to see
both walking their attitude struts
like a pair
of slow tail wagging mutts.

Then the skinny
coke head whore
trying to sell her depreciating
asset once more,
and the old loon
with dirty clothes and no socks on
singing show songs lustily out of tune.

There is no reason
in their glassy eyes
no sense of hope
in all the lies
no answer to the whys
just another statistic about who dies.
They babble and scream instead of talking
the living dead
the dead men walking.

They act out on bus or street
giving the other riders and walkers a late night freak.
Boozed up and stinking
even the ones who haven’t been drinking.
One craps herself
and the piss runs down the aisle
I won’t be forgetting the stench of that one for awhile.
Life plays itself out in the Olympic city
sordid, dangerous and shitty
like an open sore in a town
that shows no
deference except to crass indifference
to the horrors around us
and mores the pity.
One has the feeling we are all
may be going
for a fall
at least that is how its starting look to
a fly on the wall.

©Copyright December 5, 2008 by John-Ward Leighton