A mid-day plague

Planks rotted through.
The bus stop bench now offering rudimentary relief for those in need.
The primitive squalor of the situation is lost on the morning's gathering
who've chosen instead to slump like plants under hard rain.
A chattering choir of corned teeth huddled together tight -
cigarettes forsaken at their feet in rituals of puff, puff, flick
so hands can hum evenly together without break in skin
and in white smoke speech they cursed the continuous loss of heat.

Except an old man.
Dressed in off-mob black, with a face the shade of skeleton blue,
dressed better than anybody I'd seen in years.
He dipped ever so slightly into the middle hole of the bench,
his final plunge springing loose two legs like broken switchblades
and then down they dangled like a wooden child's then quickly still.
A grin last seen on Florida's panhandle demarcated his head
like a spiral of stairs down the slide of his face.
He factored in things the rest of us had not.
His socks were onyx.

A black rivulet weaved around my shoes then over the curb.
It ceased so suddenly I wondered if someone had turned the faucet off,
but then it became clear that black snakes were all around us,
pouring from the lawn above, down the slope to the sidewalk
and then running in staggered stream along the gutter.
The old man softly clapped like this was the show he was here for
as the rest of us raised our knees impossibly high
and angled our toes like railroad spikes,
picking exact spots on the ground to hit.

The bus eased heavy into the turn
a blown tire flapping the street in bursts.
The old man's eyes trembled as his symphony gained strength
and motioned for me to join him and share the moment as his guest.
Insanity creates instant brotherhood.
As I tuned his hearing aid down a bit
I could recreate a pitch and tremolo just right
where the screams sounded like a fever of strings.