Fragments

The oligarchy has fallen,

the last noisy potentate,

overdosed on the drug of unlimited power,

shudders alone in his monumental grave

atop the shards of previous civilizations,

the earth, long ago, inherited by the meek.

I take my place, tin cup in hand

amongst street corner philosophers,

those who have watched the collapse

from the periphery,

to which they had been banished,

shielded by their weakness and their unimportance,

while the strong and the ambitious

clamored for ascendency

and tumbled.

Those remainders and reminders,

decliners and defilers,

wandering jungle paths and crumbling highways,

picking fruit for pennies from the cultivated rows

of those who deem themselves superior,

or leaning on bus stop walls, drinking beer

pilfered from the excesses of the privileged,

going nowhere

at home within their own skin.

The unaspiring, the unrepentant, the untouched,

the unwanted, the adjudged, the invisible,

making their way,

in the shadows of skyscrapers

and along irrigation ditches,

without possession or want,

mere fragments, invalids, broken dishes,

discards from the rubble of time,

open to the wind and rain and stars,

tended by angels,

in the last resort,

the forgotten, the blessed,

degenerates and sadhus together,

breathing the breath of the divine.

7/26/16