Strap-Hanger

He rambles, mumbling, standing,
a hand in a fingerless knit glove grasping hold
of a bus seat or really one of the metal poles
that come up from the seats at the corner.
His long frayed coat sways against the sway
of the bus, billowing the sullied stench away
from his body and toward the rest of us.
He looks like he would be unsteady at the best
of times, and every time the bus comes to rest
creaking, as its brakes grind, he stumbles
into the people around him. honestly, if it wasn’t easy
to see how sloppy he is, they would probably believe
he was picking their pockets.

He has eyes that can only have ever been called
beady, and if his beard and brows were any bushier
he couldn’t be said to have any eyes at all.
The hair on his face must have been grown
as an attempt to compensate for the hair
that was on his head but decided on its own
it was time to evacuate. The hair he has left
is grown long around the bald scalp,
making him resemble an ascetic monk, which
he may be. I haven’t ruled it out.

He rambles, mumbling, sitting,
his fingers fiddling with the frayed end of his coat
sleeve.