The Poet

As the firetruck rambles past, the stranger across the street closes his eyes and breathes diesel. The siren's roar augments the perfect melody he knows so well, enough to make him gasp again, and shudder. The hot breath of the exhaust pipe evokes the flames of some far off tragedy. He can hear the screams, see the charred out hollow of someone else's broken life. He is moved, it does not matter in which direction. He smacks his lips and smiles.

The sirens fade. No longer parted by the firetruck, he spies a haggard man across the street in a business suit. When he was a child, he would wear his father's jacket and carry around his father's briefcase, racing around the house in a pedal car. He would interview neighbors, and strangers in shopping malls and restaurant booths. "What do YOU want to be when you grow up?" He posed this question earnestly to business executives and old widows. They would laugh uncomfortably and tell him he was precious, or too precocious for his own good. When they turned the question back on him, as the situation demanded, he would shrug, and laugh. This always seemed to be enough. He was just a child after all.

He would play "army man" with his friends, and he always got upset when the stage deaths weren't well acted. When they played baseball, he delighted himself by imitating the swings of famous ballplayers. They would play schoolhouse in his friend's basement, and he was always affronted when his ficticious schoolwork received less than stellar marks. There were strict rules to his imagination, which he defined arbitrarily and enforced like a despot.

Some dreams blossom, and some die on the vine. Others are sold at the market for pennies. His just grew and grew and grew untill they became grotesque and untenable. He gorged himself on dreams, and his visionary appetite became insatiable. He plucked the dreams of others and ate them like red apples, as his fell and rotted at his feet.

The stranger stares at the man in the suit. Whatever dreams this man had, he sold them long ago, and dons the transaction in an unflattering set of pinstripes. The businessman catches him staring, this unkempt vagrant, and shoots him a look of disgust. "Get a job, you f***** slob" the look exclaims (though not aloud). But the man across the street does not notice, he has slipped back into the daydream that the firetruck dropped at his feet. He does not notice, either, when I drop a quarter into his cup.

-sw