Make a detour;
rather than pour your family
into the gaping entrance of
Central Park, which he guards
all 69 inches of flesh, and 6 more of hair
in leather pants that strangle thighs with blackness
and patched, stretched leather jacket
the back studded by
a metallic peace sign

but he comes not in peace

awaiting the light, crosses the street
a militant angel
with a righteous aversion
to the blood of sheep, of squares
whose conformed sides produce more squares
right-angle-headed children, who, they hope
will mature to know
which side they’re on
won’t cross that line
no matter how green the traffic-lights
the green highlights of
the invading Mohawk
that strikes a gleam of impressionable wonder
in that waddling midget, who just graduated
from the stroller
whose infantile shaggy blonde mop
ceases to be cute in parental eyes
but becomes a threat lest he forget
which green light to listen to
the paper, with those portraits
of old Washington and Jefferson, whose long hair
incendiary political tactics
and sea-green statue
could inspire renegade lifestyles just as easily
as those green liberty spikes
which strike every eye they encounter
when God’s wrath is dispatched
outside the heavenly borders
of that Eastern Village on the hill

to which he shall return
after making his daily passage of
shock, he will discard the
anxiety of his exemplary performance
once he hits the subway, that mole
which eats through subterranean city
until it hits
that distasteful village of rebellion
which renders picturesque iconoclasts
ordinary hedonist youths
strutting those insurgent streets
confidently, heightened by
the daily dose of prescription or non-prescription pills
and by

boots like curmudgeonly wombats
growling at the ground they
scatter their soles about

black as rivers of monotony
streaming through streets of diaphanous deluge
a tapping, like the emaciated soul
buried alive in a cacophonic coffin
a coughing, after the cough-drop
fails to stop leather from falling
like poached rodents upon autumncrust
upon walkways, strangled in gutters
where tributaries flutter and ankles stutter

brushed by proximal pants and dresses
which billow and sashay
imparting deposed particles of smog
inundating gravitating bodies
and their flightless souls of ocular brightness
those fireflies of urban daytime

bespectacled by spikes
which point like rubbernecked motorists
as they drive, with soles for wheels
squealing, chafing the cement track
drive onward and into
thriving flesh of the city
meeting hordes like swords meet meat
and the popular epicenter
bleeds, and the wound gapes open
to accept a distressed
bootwalker