somewhere between the bricks and the sidewalk

[a long overdue poem inspired by the old men of Oaxaca City]

With both feet rooted deep into the concrete, hands shoved far into his pockets as if they were digging for a childhood memory, on the corner he stands sentinel. Alert but dozing off, by the look in his eyes his body is not more than a standing corpse. With nothing left inside but a heart, beating a foreign rhythm at half the intended pace, and only enough bones to withstand his stupor, he lives and he breathes sustained only by that which his corner provides. He's never seen another block in his life, but the wrinkles run so deep in his face that they appear to have been carved sharply into him by prolonged overexertion; a staggeringly distant voyage that peeled off thick flakes of him like a rusty chisel.

His skin is the Sahara. When it rains his body drains the water in like a sponge. The millions of tiny drops will never see daylight again. They become him. He doesn't leave the corner. He sits there round the clock, standing guard of the cracks in the pavement and the chipping bricks in the wall behind him. He is their foundation. Like a rock worn smooth after years of braving the tide, he stands tall in an unremitting slouch.

His eyes glaze over with the thick sugar that only time, patience, and the absence of love can afford. Behind them lie caverns darker than the last stop of the last train before daybreak, whose drowsy, screeching brakes will, in time, coax the sun to rise slowly to his post.

In this darkness, however, there is no emptiness. For with only one corner to see, 300 bricks to guard in a lifetime, a passing day is filled with nothing but one million thoughts. A distant horn is more magnificent than Mozart’s finest opera, a foreign smile his favorite novel. Between the bricks and the sidewalk, bricks and the sidewalk, all he can do is read. His life is but to listen.

He does not watch for his eyes are trained never to leave the maze of lines and cracks sprawling across the ground before him, the atlas engulfed by a crowd of ants who scurry in droves to avoid his gaze. A blue-green river of recycled water and expired laundry detergent sweep away lost candy wrappers and abandoned cigarette butts in the crevice between the road and the sidewalk. They are the ocean that numbs the crumbling concrete beneath his feet; a black hole in which no one steps for fear of being swept away just the same. If they were, they would find themselves in a land where punk playbills carpet the earth, cellophane chandeliers hang from a plastic bag sky, and the cereal box roof piggybacks on pillars of long-emptied cans of re-fried beans.

The man, aware of this world, though he's never seen it through his sugar-glazed eyes, avoids it with the same concentration as the ants who run thrice as fast, a boulder of bread propped atop their shoulders, to escape his gaze.

He is the watchman. He grazes one corner for a lifetime yet floods every street and alley with his everlasting presence. He is creased like an undying fold between the bricks and the sidewalk. Hand outstretched, palm peering towards the hatefully bright blue sky, and eyes venturing nowhere but inside, he assumes his post.