FOR THE GREATER GOOD OF THE FEW

THE UN/RELUCTANT CHESS PIECE

 

A new day is rising,

burnt orange spackled with pink hues

turning to goldenrod yellow

evolving as it will,

bright light of a new day birthed.

Standing in a line

stretching

out over the horizon,

the woman at the hard ass

honed edge front  

thinks maybe

if she could grab that sun,

she’d pawn the dawn for cash money

keep her faux silver and glass diamond earrings

until tomorrow when new needs
dictate there’ll be new things

brought to the three ball shop

where even the damned darkness can be hocked.

“Hardcore Gold Pawn

would pay a lots of money”

she thought

“if that sun was in this vault.”

Course ninety days later

when times is better,

she’ll come back,

rescue that old sun

from the bin in the back.

Return that borrowed against time,

pay the vigorish along the way,

for you know it

the sun be returned

to make itself another day.

She reaches for the sun

as it rises to view,

wonders why she can’t quite grasp,

taking that shit from all;

for her own.

C’mon bitch you belongs to me too, motherfucker.

Your light is only a loan;

you’ll have your ass back

riding high in the sky,

hog white bright burning down on me,

before you even know you’s gone.

She touches it,

warm slick shit on her cool fingertips,

trying to garb that third ball.

the crowd behind her sees

reaches out too, won’t let her lone.

Wanting to mortgage a future too!

One that never seems to arrive,

they start to push and drive,

mayhem breaks out,

someone slices no one,

to hell and gone

not knowing why.  

God knows fightin’ & fuckin’s

the only free kinds of fun

Oh the noise as the surge swallows all form of order,

as all reach for or are trampled by a crowd

not recognizing the only thing with any life

is beyond them, out of touch...until—

The sound of the lock snicking and clicking

as the key’s turned,

order restored, line re-formed,

lady at the front rushes to the third window over.

The dawn forgot this day at the pawn shop.

“How much you give me for these fuckin earrings?

I paid two thousand dollars for?”

A new day in this place begun,

a new race to the pawn shops windows won,

and still outside people are orderly

(Security)

as they contemplate how much of a loan they get,

if they could just pawn the useless urban dawn.

© M Durfee

5.9.2014