It's been a long time since I've seen someone beautiful.
Day to day, the typically deranged,
march past in their incessant sameness
each indistinguishable from the last.
The first sets the bar low for the next,
leaving me beige,
sparks of ecru
on a sandpaper sea.
It's been awhile since I've been totaled.
Since I've been spat upon and tossed out with the filth,
pitiful and propped up
by the rotting wood of the wounded.
Since I've heard the mournful symphony of bottle and can,
the sting of citrus on a glass split hand,
my red throat raw
with tobacco's pitch black
burn.
But I've seen the leaves turn over
in anticipation of rain
as the thunderheads rolled in along the touchlines,
the emphatic wind shaking hands with the blades of the pitch.
I've seen the flight of hawks as they scan the fields for prey.
I've tasted my own sweat on my own tongue
as my troubled past falls slowly
from my battered and beleaguered
frame.
I sleep the sleep of the dead and the free
dreaming of bawd and brawl
in sacred rest denied the wicked:
the rest of the redeemed.

Still,
it's been so very long
since I've seen
someone
beautiful.