The bus crawls the surface of the city
inch by inch before the coffee's come.
Homeless man on the Burnside corner,
second star and the Cisco gone.
Each of us could give compassion, but:
the night is long, and our eyes full of holes.
And the ending cadence of the war-time morning:
the minefield sting of the downtown sidewalk,
cars just missing on the margin moving
indie artists and contractor moles.
Past broken glass and then concertina wire
we find the motion blur of the morning's fire.
Hole-eyed, heart-weary, no compassion for the piss-stained
or the wounded bird or the city girl.