The Street Sweeper

The Street Sweeper

Only sleeps

After the mockingbird reminds the world of his name

He sweeps the streets clean

Of glitter and sweat

And he likes to remember decades ago

Here, his still Greenwich home

Was a catalyst for change

Decades ago,

He sat atop the hotbed tabletop of a movement

A movement which would soon forget him

The Street Sweeper likes to pocket

Patches of camouflage corduroy

And drop bits of gold and nickel

Likes to give back to the streets that made him

He drops his mop

And races the rattle of his eardrum to the ground

Anxious of the clamor

It sounds almost like gunshot-stunted footprints

Named Stonewall

The Street Sweeper hums melodies that sound

Like gravel topped black top

And the stop signs they would hold

Were they painted green

This pavement is still shaking

In the meter of 1969

When a lady who called herself his boyfriend

6 days out of the week

Took her place at the front line

Glass in hand

And a face that took days to paint on

On that night,

The Street Sweeper’s cock-sure Concubine

Uncaked the gold mane her pupils proudly poured from themselves

Cast a courage-emptied bottle

Full-throttle at the band of blithe badges

That bore the continuation of her trauma

And she begged them to demi-perm her eye shadow

The Street Sweeper shines a light post

The light post stands erect

Where starry-eyed boys

Forty years prior

Hid books empty of them

And changed into themselves for a night

Where there was darkness

This street now exudes

Where there was silence there is now a faint buzz

A buzz begun when the Street Sweeper’s muse

Fused her fist with her past and put her father’s

Memory to use

When she raised it to Dionysus

When she called for Carnival

And a contract that she could love

Baton browed bastards

Ripped that fist from its growth

And plastered her last linkage to her father

Across the wall

Like a crimson cascade

Where the Street Sweeper now naps

When he gets too tired of dancing for dusk

The wall she peered up from

The day they met

One and one-half limp-wristed fists fighting back their feelings

The wall that refuses to break down

Even after her T Cells fell lonely and done

The Street Sweeper

Only sleeps after the mockingbird announces itself of existence

And he only sleeps alone

Because he alone

Fights the crusade

Against the monster of a world turned

By forgotten sacrifice

The Street Sweeper sweeps his street

Until the mockingbird remembers that he has a name

The street he has chosen to remember

Because his force-fed freedom

Was bled from these cracks