Forgotten Pockets By Jasen Sousa

Forgotten Pockets

Puddles and other places 

I am seen throughout the day, stranger

to the world and to myself.  A portion 

of my being slowly evaporates underneath

Weeping Willows and AC’s that droop

out of 3rd floor windows.  I walk past a park

in the middle of July and watch

balls fly, there is no place that kids have to be.

Reminders of intruders 

who party on the balcony of my conscience.  

I carry a lot with me in different compartments,

but it is the items I have left inside of forgotten pockets

that I desire to reintroduce to my fingertips.  

Falling out of my dreams, parachutes 

containing incomplete goals imagined 

on dim-lit days.  My toes yearning to be comfortable 

inside damp, disfigured boots.  My previous success 

is an equation I can no longer compute.  

I walk swiftly past store windows to avoid eye 

contact with the man no longer intact, the man

in black, black backpack, black hat, swallowing

a black......gun.  Future memories blown out the back

landing in cracks where the sidewalk and street meet, until

a machine comes by and sweeps them away.

Roofers that quit and didn’t take the ladder down.  Good kid,

madder now, scowl, molded angry brow because there

are forces which will not allow the man I witness 

throughout the day to be present now.