The Fortification and Pardon of the Debtor of Manchester

How do we make you more palatable?
Are you art? To be tasted with the waste of museums?
Like a dime on a doormat, slowly fornicating with the wall
That surrounds you – you have not let down your god yet,
But you have caught an illness of conscience that wills
You to a neighbor’s bedside, pleading for masculine forgiveness
Like a trite nobleman that is really a bird flying away
Lost its sight and comes around for the honey you give it
Insolvent sheet rocks riot behind your ordinary back

Behind your normalized entreat like a spindle on the coin purse
Of the weight of the March’s worldly invitation, no stain on you
Or your proud children, watching you from the corner of the room
Waiting for you to come to terms with the laughter at the television
That you could give yourself, no, not this feeble moment,
Not this pre-laundry moment of crackled grasping notes
That scared your mother away for good and gave your father
A heart attack. The look on your face. The look on your face.

And what is stop you? This old poem rattling broken malpractice
Like a painting on your loose skin? This endangered animal you
Place a few coins in a bucket while you pay a ten piece for a pack
Of cigarettes? No, you do not have the right to ask that anymore.
She will not give you kindness in these days of old beer rattled cows
And persuasion gifts of pearl storms that wash away your timid
Catastrophe. You are the rhythm. You are the curse.
There are millions of you in this city and and every city, waiting
For the moment for this all to be over, but your relief will not come
Not that easy. Not this soon. And you know that. You always did.