Anger is a tangible being
when it confronts you from desperate eyes.
You asked if I was scared
and I spoke the truth when I said no.
Though your spitting face, with it dishevelled beard and manic eyes
was barely four inches from my own
and you spoke knowingly of crushing skulls into brain membranes
with a certainty I won't pretend to admire.
But Karl, you hold your anger so tightly
and I can see why.
This toughness
belongs to you, it is yours to wear, to own.
It cannot be shuffled along by policemen at night,
cannot be kicked out by phone calls made in desperate surrender
cannot be stolen by another haunted soul on these city streets
leaving you empty handed
and angry, as always.
It seems your best, your only defence
against a world that has forgotten how to love you
(perhaps it never knew).
And all this because you just wanted
a fucking buzz cut.
Wanted to cut away your long, lank trappings,
reveal the naked skin, the scars you might
recognize for what they are - healed.
Instead you sat on your sleeping bag across the street,
calling out your frustrated agony to those that passed.
While the wind lifted, ever so gently, the roughened tendrils
Of your thick grey hair.
And I sat at the window, reading poetry from a book,
as though it were not right here
in front of me.
