Occasional Poem

Outside again, i gazed at signs
crackling in FINNIGAN’S windows:

BUD     MILLER LITE     YUENGLING
PETE’S WICKED BREW.

Then evening’s coolness
or was it the full moon

glowing through filmy clouds
reminded of signs more subtle:

pavement as a place where i should walk, or stagger;
3rd Street as a place where i might ride;

and FINNIGAN’S itself
a zoo of citizens guzzling.

Philadelphia, indeed―
this city notorious

for liberty and its coarse edges―
came to me then as a gift of symbols

like a world of found words,
and every word had a different meaning,

and every word willy-nilly meant desire.