Freedom of the City

When I was walking the other day

it occurred to me that the homeless man shitting 

in a Folgers can on 110th and Broadway 

wasn’t shitting in that Folgers can 

because he had nowhere else to shit, but rather

because at some point in his childhood

he had dreams. 

Maybe acting, maybe politics, 

maybe he was to be the next 

Socrates, or Bob Marley.

Or maybe he was to grow old 

with a woman of copper eyes and feather skin

who’d whip him up pancakes Saturday

while the hummingbirds in the rosebush

peeked innocently through the kitchen window.

But one morning he woke to find himself

tucked in a nest of newspaper 

and old blankets as the cars 

rolled by his CityBank stoop

and people passed without a hint of sympathy. 

So he wandered around until he found an old

abandoned Folgers can with a thin shell 

of coffee grounds lining the inside, 

and decided to shit in that can right there, 

because why the fuck not?