Tzedakah

I walk alone down a dark and foggy street at night,
Following the impingement of my own contaminated soul.
Up ahead, the silhouette of a man,
Consumed by his own shadow.
It is regal and horrendously giant, an opaque simulacrum.
I am swaying in the delirium of psychotropic salutation,
Manifesting theories of my own downfall
At the expense of eroticism.
Like, what if the man were my landlord?
Or rather my shadow self
Out for vengeance
For my having repressed him.
I light a cigarette.
The wrathful pall is lifted
And my heels are teased.
The electric wires are like eels—
They hum and swim into the foggy gloom.
Anemia of the low pulse brings me down
And I am certainly delusional.
The laughter of impertinent clowns from an alleyway
Recalls me to my shortcomings,
Both as an object of lust and as a clown.
A dog standing outside of a house, snarling and seedy,
Stares me down.
I stare back, breaking the torpor with assiduity,
And I smile.
Strangely, he smiles back.
I offer him a drag on my cigarette,
And he comes over, tail wagging, and takes a puff.
He exhales the smoke like an old pro.
I pet him till he runs off.
Man’s best friend, there he goes.
I pass a camera shop.
It is full of voyeuristic ghosts
With too much time on their hands.
The cameras flash as I pass.
I am a celebrity among the ghosts.
I keep walking, step on a crack, and curse society.
A baby cries, awakening me to the redundancy of my own needs.
Money, I think.
Money.
The local businesses need my money,
As do the whores and the wayfarers.
There’s the crack house.
The people in there need my money, too.
But I dare not enter.
Theair is too intoxicating.
The fog sits on the city’s back
Like the pack of a vagabond,
And the city is afloat,
Drifting towards some madman’s nightmare.
I look up at the moon,
Which, behind the fog, is hazy, and full,
Like a bastion of serenity
Above the sedated world.
I watch the man,
Who is close now,
And still featureless,
And I find myself ready to clash like a kamikaze
Into his barrel chest.
Perhaps he’ll embrace me.
Then, I can weep.
But now I see him, his features in the lamplight.
He’s a dignified man with bright, friendly eyes.
Too friendly and dignified for me.
I’d rather he were a pimp.
We nod at each other
And the fog breaks violently around the shoulder of his coat,
And sneaks back towards him from behind,
As does my gaze.
Smoke from my mouth drifts into the haze
And I face forward and carry on,
Alert to the hum of the electric wires.
Money, I think.
Money in my pockets.
I’ve got to give it away.
I’ve got to give it away.