I. The Burial of the Dead (Stanza 4)

Millions of nobodies
Grasping for sunlight captured by concrete vortexes
Sculpting their view of the sky.
Each walks lifelessly through the maze,
Sunken eyes and Starbucks cups,
Anonymity whispered in their footsteps.
Iron gates at 116th and Broadway conceal a world.
One o’ clock meant you were supposed to be somewhere,
Buried in leather-bound books or Jack Daniels,
A temporary ignorance of a permanent problem.
She put down the book, the bottle,
And saw him standing there, hollow-eyed too.
He looked familiar.
“Let’s be miserable together, let’s go nowhere together.”
And so they talked and kissed and touched.
He smelled like old paper and whiskey,
But her heart lurched, and she was lonely
So she laughed. And they slept together.
When she woke, the table was empty
And the bottle remained.
What happened?
“You! hypocrite lecteur! — mon sembable, — mon frère!”