I hung out with the Devil on Manhattan's
Lower East Side

Had a toke of poverty
long, slow, heavenly inhale

The hobos burning dreams
'round a trash can full of fear

Anesthetizing homelessness
'neath a cold, dark scrapered sky

Pimps and whores were ticking business
like Wall Street whackers on the Stock Exchange

Longing Johns laid with riches seeded
in the backs of black-glassed shiny white limos

The tenements lurched in the chains of their indignity
shutters cracking in the wind

Babies crying, dogs barking
unheeded or unheard

And when I asked the Devil what tunes he'd like to hear
boom-boxing with the fumes of brake-dancing automobiles

He smiled in his ghoulish way
with a glint of fire in his eye and said

'Gospel.'


(Previously published in MiPo Magazine, Winter 2004)