Cement City

Inverted Stars

Wooden planks and big flat screws

Made a well-worn bench

Fit for one man. But the man

Wore aches, pains and a brown tweed coat.

Not the bench.

What wore the aged bench so?

To have cracks where black mold grew

Round edges not to cut, but bruise battered dreams

Or perhaps they were upheld

Yes, the bench had held the man

Three feet up from the dirty lobby floor, and the man had laid there, counting some pretty stars

That might have been shadows or spiders on the low ceiling

All that darkness despite the bright mornings, but

Like inverted thought, the man had probably thought

Where there was nothing

There must be space for hope.

Head-strong, he was

Toughened by the flames of life that continued to roar at night.

Then the bench was removed

The man soon followed.

Replaced were holes in the walls and floor

No indent of the man--

No shadow or outline or a whisper of care

I'd expected at the least

The smell of his cigar to linger in the lobby air.

A shame it was

The bench had been a fine spot to rest one's bum

Before one grew accustomed to the many other benches:

Metal and plastic

And rotting public installments

(Don't even mention the lacquered wooden 'leaning' benches)

All that have an armrest glued in its middle

Curved like a frown.

So I slept with the frowns

In an awkward angle, with an aching back or on the ground

Like the man in the tweed jacket did now.

We stayed under the bridge

And watched the hazy sky

And when the clouds would part to reveal a black empty night

We called those our stars, for how lucky

We were

To live and breathe another day of

This life.

I'm actually really proud of this poem. Partly inspired by true events; the bench in my apartment lobby was taken away to prevent people from sleeping there. The title came from a quote in A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles. I can't remember the exact phrasing, but it was the scene where the bees have returned to the beekeeper, and their outline were like black (hence, inverted) stars in the sky.