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.