Draft: "Inaugurations"

Writer's Note: I scribbled these lines a couple of days ago, and I'm not sure what the sum is--verse or a story, or an outline for a short film, or all of those; and the intended meaning is fairly elemental--the difficulty of governing human emotion and impulse.


Inaugurations

The inauguration in Washington
of the elegant, smart man,
pale brown in an elegant, smart suit,
and watched by millions
will change everything tomorrow,
but now as the parade passes before him,
on a noisy New York street
a skinny boy with sandy hair waits
outside an apartment building
for a girl he likes, and likes too much,
to be sent to the corner store
by her mother,
and the boy is watched by a man
in shorts, with a rubber waist band,
despite the chill (he wears a jacket).
The man has seen the boy before
and cannot forget him--
is irritated by him--
and tries to scare him
but the boy won't scare.
Finally, the man gets the boy
to agree to share the girl's attention
and they both wait.

Unfortunately, the boy's mother
is not watching him,
but is watching men come and go
in a pornography shop,
and when the police carry her out
she explains that she'd prefer to sell coffee
but can't get hired
and as they carry the disturbed woman
past her son on the sidewalk
she is still explaining
and as her son calls one of the policemen Father
(she told him they soon would meet his unknown father)
and then as the boy calls her Mother
and asks where she is going
she is still explaining
and the boy follows
distracted from his girl
and the man in shorts and jacket waits.