POETRY: The Counterbalance by Reggie Drake

A picture perfect portrait,

Of social and economic corrosion.

Depression turns suburban street corners,

Into loitering lounges as streetwalkers work avenues for daily revenue.

Base bumpers and trunk thumpers prance down public venues,

As if to announce the arrival of some risque parade.

A dying fragment in America's brain child.

Ignorant young cats throw rocks at the crazy lady down 8th street

And the neighboring drunk stands on his stoop uttering countless maledictions and blasphemies,

In a single incoherent slur.

A man who once had a dream, a vision,

Now reduced to a meandering, heineken-wielding guttersnipe.

Eviction notices plague houses like the spectre of death.

Dozens of denizens crowd into sanctuaries surveying the sermonizer,

As if they were mere mortals gazing upon Michael the Archangel,

Desperate to find solace and reprieve from the hard knocks of life.

Eager to escape the violence and corruption of the home created by human hostilities.

But amid the decay lies the self-starting artist,

Who endeavors to to better his craft.

As society crumbles he flourishes;

Eager to paint the vivid picture of this peculiar predicament through his work.

He is neither perturbed nor disturbed by the drunk roaring his random rambles;

Nor does the altercation down the hall break his ironclad concentration.

He works magic with his pencil as he abracadabra's shapes and contours on his notepad.

And despite the chaos and disorder outside;

He simply exists to continue his art,

And bring beauty,

To a dying world