My Cardboard Balcony

The Man You See (A Sonnet) by Belinda Roddie The man you see is half past nine and dead along the streets of Washington and Post. His hair is rather white, his big nose red from snorting all the dust and city's ghosts. When I first watched him sleeping where the hail caught artists in its blust'ry canvas, I could not help but predict that I'd set sail upon the same sea where these authors die. For poets like their booze and battle scars, (so say the critics, bloated from their meal of bloody Sauvignon and caviar) but I stray from the gutters while I reel. The writer that you see may be dirt poor, but throw away your jewels - he has much more.

She had average looks, average hair, average build, average height, average everything except the skin. Her skin was tattooed with gold. Real gold. No joke. Yellow gold and tawny gold and blond gold and the kind of gold that's nearly tinted orange on the bars you see in cinema.