there’s a bench in Central Park where I sit..listening to Bill Evans…On Green Dolphin Street playing softly…watching boys play grown-up…girls…dress-up…and the whole of society out to impress…no matter the cost…

and seated…not-so-fashionable..
not-so-hep…a fat man with an empty paunch…nothing up my sleeve…pockets with eternal holes…the constant sound of coins dropping to concrete…I take it all in…

strollers as much as a used car..
bonnets baring names…and a smartphone in every palm…talk talk talk talk…the constant chatter of nothing…absolutely nothing…

Green Dolphin Street becomes Lush Life…twelve o’clock tales of jazz and cocktails…if only…if only I could rot away with the rest…
with those whose lives are lonely too…

it is a long drawn out saxophone solo of scales up and down…played with soul…so rare these days…whatever happened to soul…tossed in a back alley dumpster with the empties…

I sit on this bench in Central Park and watch the beautiful people…the pretty ones who poverty never touched…filled with smoothies and stock options…credit does what credit can…no worries…
I sit…and sit…it is time…

leave now and forever hold your peace…holding onto peace…that is all to be asked…