Vagrants

Your words are vagrants,
bent black and blue
by the wind -
soiled and lonely,
waiting for a beautiful man
to brush them from your face
and make them clean.

They long to find a hallway
and to intoxicate someone's lover
and play Jezebel in his arms
without understanding
what his name really means
and why his wife is dying.

They want to call him on the telephone
and ask if these scars are real
or if all sin is original,
immaculate and lacking,
like something left out overnight
that cannot find its home.

They want to hit below the belt
and leave lipstick on his collar,
a telltale slash,
and climb into a whiskey bottle  
left hiding in a suitcase -
the kind your father carried

when he left you
waiting for a promise.