Scenes through a screen window

I'll be leaving the city soon, closing the store and moving to Vashon Island, where the office for my on-line store will have a view across Quartermaster Harbor. Here's something I wrote a few years back about living in the city, where my apartment has a view of an alley.



Scenes through a screen window

by John MacBeath Watkins
copyright 2005

on my own
in a solitary home
while sirens scream
in emergency streets
and the madmen yell
and bang their heads on
dumpsters of redemption
and try to claim through pain
the clarity of sanity
sacrificed to methedrine
and the desperate gods
of the alleys where the drunken sods
urinate in public never caring
about tourists who are staring
at the rude stream against the wall
while crows watch over their garbage
and comment with a protective caw.


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