from the top looking down

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from the top looking down
He used to make up histories for him,
stories that told of tragic accidents
or unrequited love. Or how he’d seen
something he wasn’t supposed to see and then
had sought asylum in Boston streets,
sharing his secret with the crackheads and
the corner prostitutes who tell him “sweetie
   I know it must be hard.”  
                                       Now none of it
was true of course, but when you’re high up in
your penthouse office suite, a hit of blow
lining your cedar desk, the dread-locked man
who digs the cans with dirt-caked claws below
the overhang of the downtown Hilton Inn
is better entertainment than another
dose of internet porn.
      He can’t imagine
what it must be like to dive in other’s
waste, to finger through their soggy fries
so fat and soft like city sewer slugs,
or to what depths of shame you stoop to find
yourself a picker of the street-life’s shit, the dregs
of the human race. He tries to imagine how
he’d will to go on living if every day
was desperate search for sustenance, and vows
he’ll never reach that point, to see a day
when life’s reduced to scraps and clinging on —
but never him, not the twenty-first century’s youngest  
CEO of the largest firm in Boston!
The intercom’s buzzing voice yanks him past
his window musings as Bekah let’s him know  
his wife has brought him lunch.
                                                He tells her to send
her up, clears his search-bar history, scans through
his cell-phone messages, and snorts the cocaine
off of the desk. Outside, the man has left
his can, a soggy paper bag in hand,
enough to see another day. He shifts
his leather seat. How could you live like that?

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