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Modern Slavery
I live in a neighborhood where
The girls
Turn around and look directly
Back at the cars as they drive past.
One of them is named Mary,
Just like Mary Magdalen,
And in the winter she'll stand on the corner
Until three in the morning,
Even when it's two degrees out.
Of course none of these girls
Have pimps
When you ask them.
They're all free agents,
Or so they say.
They don't want to talk you out of a date
If they can help it.
The impression you get from a distance
Is that they're overgrown kids
Who simply don't want to work,
Who run the streets and crash wherever they
See fit, or bums who are just trying
To support a habit on their own.
Anyway some nights I buy a cup of coffee
At the nearby McDonalds
And give it to Mary
Just to warm up her hands.
You spend the first half of your life
Trying to kill yourself
And the second half
Trying to keep yourself alive,
Or so the saying goes.
So, in that vein, I've retired
From my years of being a John
To being a Christian to the prostitutes on occasion.
It all changed when my hero,
A fellow writer, found out about my exploits
And threatened to throw me in a cage
And let the real evil people go to work on me.
The President could speak
Gandhi could come back
Jesus Christ could give a sermon on the mount
But when my hero speaks, I listen.
So anyway I was handing Mary a cup of coffee
And she asked why I was being so nice
And I told her that I knew that she had a rough life
And that, people like us with hard lives,
Had to stick together.
And besides, I've done enough evil in this life
For ten lifetimes and
It was about time I started paying it forward.
I tend to try to rise above the life I've lead
In my writing
Because poetry from the gutter
Has pretty much been covered
And repeated, and copied
Again and again
Ever since Bukowski.
Instead I try to take the underground
And raise it to a pop snesibility.
But I can't stop thinking about Mary tonight.
I wonder whether she's made enough money
To cover her habit, how
Her pimp is treating her
And when was the last time she talked to her parents.
I wonder if she's ever read poetry, say,
By Maya Angelou perhaps,
Watched a foreign film
Or dreamt of seeing another country.
I wonder
If she's ever seen a Red's game
Or watched them dot the "I" in person.
I wonder if she remembers
Her first kiss or
If she ever went to Disneyworld as a kid.
I wonder what ever made her spirit soar and
How permanently she's been caged.
I wonder if she sings and,
If so, I think I know why.
