Turnstile

I am the same shit as yesterday, the recidivist’s door,

the same shit as two days ago and the day before,

timeless as a baseball game where nobody cares

because nobody scores. Outside the hospital

the addicts glare.  At the graveyard,

the hospital, and the big gull of the sky.

I pushed the hospital’s revolving door,

came out again, saw them hunched over and walking too fast,

asleep beside convenience stores,

scrunched up like wrinkles in a glare-blasted face

under Beauty Island’s sign for HUMAN HAIR!—

transvestite ladies flashing the corner,

ex-boxers in wheelchairs, newcomers. Berserkers, the flare

just glowing as they try to stay composed, explain

“Excuse me, sir, I don’t mean to impose…”,

one foot in the revolving door

and one foot twittering on asphalt

waiting to run, forced to obey commands from on high—

doomsday wasp helicopters, the ghetto bird

some called it, rounding the mass

to the high summer grass, to downtown intersections,

and asphalt homes stocked full of pharmaceuticals

and dead black men patrolled by helicopters

waiting to be wheeled in through revolving doors.

Outside it’s twilight, packs of kids on motorbikes

popping wheelies through the Mac trucks,

busting windows, slinging dope, out of adoptions.

Less and less is Baltimore

a city of options.