a near catastrophe in mild blue

A burlap bag taut on a bony rack

awful parched and scratchy brown

jonesing for a warm rain's slake,

he was a sisal sack of unhappy tack

when I chanced on him that summer,

his pithy brick grafitti combed over

a stenciled canvas of regular weave

with a misty green branding muttered

through the gone meander of himself.

After calling for the quench he craved

overlapping ripples from silver drizzle

plinked on a puddle in the shallow rain,

and I looked down at my own damned feet

scraped leather telescoped a mile down

splashed clean despite roccoco splatter

in the muddy district of stucco walls

where two brooding chalk eagles

proudly guarded the cute nausea

of embracing faux patina twins

tinkling on kissed pink blossoms.

None of this was or is to scale,

he was a bitter pill in a bitter shell

behind the kitchen curtains daily

a shadow hinting at the blackened sheen

of biscuits from the oven crumbling.

Which was mystery and which explained?

Be happy, be joyful a mantra

of another kind of scarlet death

in the data points that mattered

through the rasping of his noise:

and I never crossed with him again

except years later in a buzzing dream

while dozing on a warm park bench

when I chanced upon that beveled glass

and whispered three short phrases.