I’m not religious, but

By Frederick Greenhalgh

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I'm not religious, but
every morning, as I get off work
I buy Dixie's first black coffee
and walk home with a disposable cup.

The city snores, coughs, and murmurs.
Darkness clings to concrete eaves.
I trip over a man, thinking he's a garbage bag.

I'm not religious, but
5AM is an odd hour. You feel safe-the criminals are sleeping.
I cut down streets where roses grow
around barbed wire.

Stopping by a church at the meeting
of two roads,
Piety and Desire,
I light a damp cigarette.
There's caution tape around the Virgin
and grass crawling from cracks in the asphalt.

I'm not religious, but
there are twelve more dead today.
I can read the front page through a window gouged with the word 'CUNT.'
I save my fifty-cents for the laundromat.

One time, while my socks were drying,
a man staggered in with a gun.
I lowered my book to see the clerk
reverently emptying the register
as if waiting his whole life for this moment.

Though I'm not religious,
I still wonder, when I see two pigeons fight
for an empty potato chip bag, or drink
from a film of diesel fuel-

But that's no way to go to bed; easier to crush
the Styrofoam cup as you climb each stair to the seventh
story, lighting your last cigarette on a balcony,
wishing you could see the sunrise.

By Fred Greenhalgh

In memory, Mark Krasnoff, 1963-2006
Poem inspired by the truth, but not based on reality

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You preached to me -- "Next time FEMA, send lube"
as your tongue spilled out black vile
"Truth," you said, "Ask
what's happening now,
not six months ago"

We all saw the water flood the streets
but we never saw the waterline's brown scar in every neighborhood

We saw houses torn, their innards strewn
across an untended battleground
but never saw the numbers dead
spraypainted on the shutters of our street

We never waited on hold for the insurance
company, our letters returned for months,
only to hear "There's nothing we can do"

We still believe that if the worst happens,
help will come

You were an explosion of the real
from the tide of humanity
that recedes now like the swampland
that once stood where the levees broke

You were a wild thing
caged in a poisoned city,
bursting forth in your ambition with something
no other actor dared wield -- the truth

From that unsturdy and muddy place
you saw too far

And so, one hot September night,
the brutal summer not yet a memory,
you headed to the banks of that eternal river,
wielding a bottle of bourbon and valium,
to lay back on the wet grass for one last look
at the dim stars

before sinking back
to the place of cottonmouths
and catfish
where you emerged.