Turpentine Blue

its turpentine blue,
sometimes,
the way it smells
out here in the low lands of politics
and disease
where the teeth are worse than sharks
and a brother might never get the boot off his neck
to breathe,
and I’m left wondering
if the Gulag had a place
for a person with strange elections of desire;
there in the corner
with the paint chipping off,
a place to lie quietly
without catching on fire.
there in the eyes,
where the pain is the worst,
these death camps
of expectations for things to bleed
never have enough light
so that a man might
be able to see
all the various things he needs.
This hotel of shame and misery
and filth and scum
is all I’ve ever known
and can only call home;
sometimes they clean the street out front
but not so much
we’d recognize Rome.
No, here in paintings
of morgues and bathrooms
where the dancers are long legged snakes
and the customers are old hacks
without much to defend against the barkers;
all on the make,
we seep into each other; so much a brush stroke,
rubbing elbows into the other's neck,
while they scream out
how young we like ‘em,
until we are all an unnoticeable speck
waiting on a dock
for a ship that has sunk
in the harbor of our dreams of sunshine
rays to blind
our vision of yesterday
and make up hopeful moments of mine.