Regular Poem: The Eyewitness

–Ok, ma’am.  Please describe the assailant.

He was a man
tall
hair of some kind
but not very much of it
maybe a little more than none.

He had eyes–
both of them–
of one of the established colors
probably.

He was wearing clothes
I remember that much for certain
definitely clothes.

–Could you be a little more specific, please?

Oh!
Oh! Yes, of course!

Well,

he was the kind of man
who lived his life by back alleys and barrooms,
watched the clock of life tick away on his youthful dreams
that had washed away long ago
like trash on a river bed
taken downstream on a rainy, moonless night
and deposited on a lonely sandbar when the rain stops,
left there to disintegrate slowly.

He was solid like a cinder block wall
and just as grey and lifeless.
He could paint himself any color
but that cinder block would show through–
cold and hard.

He was brooding and sullen
with a seething energy almost visible beneath his skin
that unexpectedly came out in short bursts of sneers and snarls,
twisting his face and body into
an even uglier version
of his regular self–
whatever a regular self might’ve been.

He was–

–Ma’am. Thank you, but–

I’ve got one more.

He was a man who may have wanted
to be good once,
but a life of neon lovers and gun-metal friends
had persuaded him otherwise
in the dark of some wet, murderous night.

–Are you finished?

Yes.