Gas Station Poetry

She writes poetry on the backs of gas station receipts,

With ink stained fingers and a leaky pen,

As she traverses forgotten alleyways,

Where dreams lay scattered with broken beer bottles,

Amidst the strays and the lonely,

And old newspaper scraps.

.

She's mapping the minds of the broken hearted,

In the pages of expired phone books,

In her rusted bus-stop shelter,

Listening to the rain and the half-dead shouts of drunkards,

Wishing for better,

Preparing for worse.

.

Does the heart make a sound when nobody's there,

To hear it drag its pieces back together,

Hoping the glue will last the night?

If anything is possible,

Then she wonders why her skin isn't thick enough,

To stave off the chill of Manhattan December.

.

Poetry means nothing to rats and roaches,

But still she writes it all,

And tries to remember the sound of her own voice,

Though it has long faded and gone silent,

And she thinks that maybe this is why,

No one ever hears her.

.

When the paper is gone and the ink run dry,

Her nails become broken and chipped,

As she carves her soul into the cold metal walls,

East of Nowhere,

West of Nothing,

And halfway down to Lost.

.

Does the blind man see the world as it crumbles,

And cry alarm to a nation gone too deaf to hear?

Perhaps he heard it coming long before the rest,

But simply turned away,

And played our game of pretend,

Until he could no longer deny this undoing.

.

It's two more days before Blue Coats find her,

Scattering gas station poetry,

And phone book dreams like dust,

Labeling her "boy" because a doctor said so,

Not bothering with a funeral, 'cause no one would show,

As the bus-stop from nowhere wept at her loss.

.

The words of the forgotten are written in couplets,

In haikus and in limericks and songs,

With marker and paint where it doesn't belong,

Under the grime of city streets,

In the alleys where nobody goes,

In bus-stops where broken hearts call home.