Coming Home (My last poem)

Too late to do nothing.
Too early to do something.
I walk in the echoes of 4am.

I breathe boredom,
Hoping my sighs will invigorate
The black morning

Tap.
My sole slaps the sidewalk.

Tap.
My sole slaps the sidewalk.

Tap.
My sole slaps the sidewalk.

And resonates off the cool concrete
Of skyscrapers
Whose daytime majesty
Is now lost. Now they sit
Like sleeping skeletons—
Giant sleeping skeletons
Who hold the secrets to the city.

I step into the black canvas night--
Into painted dreams of
Blue-sable ladies.
Red Rolls.
Driving miles on Miles,
Getting dizzy off Dizzy.

We love, laugh and live
Down rain-laden avenues
That wash away painted dreams.

This is where I see Sonia
The homecoming queen
Who can no longer come home.
Her dry eyes shackled in shame,
She strolls the boulevard
In lace that pours over her curves
Like crimson tears.

Her lips once moist and full
Are now chalky and scarred.

She tricks for treats.

L’il Ty is her candyman
Whose little boy dreams
Drifted past Pluto after sixteen.
He guards the corner,
Autographing the sidewalk
With the blood of innocent bystanders.

He’s a celebrity,
Loved and feared by the same.

I continue on,
Dodging the sounds of sex
And arguments
That leap from windows
Ten-stories high
And fall to their death,
In the cracks of the concrete
Where grass grows.

Almost home.
I could howl at the moon!
Stubbing my toe on the steps--
Feeling stupid on my stoop—
I can’t rejoice at my safe arrival.

Instead I cry and curse silently,
Cloaked in the shadows
Of my own throbbing misery.

--J. J. Johnson (31)
written Wednesday August 23, 2006