I Expect To See Opium (Engulfed in my needs)

Booted feet on familiar concrete
Every crack holds histories
And every building breaking
The sky into a menagerie
Of blue-gray patches like
Stained glass windows hung
In rattling panes shaken
By the stiff wind of rainy days-
Holds slipping memories.

I have grown older, old it seems
Walking through the parking lot
Plains and these urban valleys that
Were once the edges of the earth
Laying in wait like a virgin brought
To my bed, ready to be conquered,
Engulfed in my need and made,
Somehow, a little more complete -
But this a different season of life.

Where I expect to see opium
smoke spilling from my teeth in
ribbons and streams a man walks his
Dog, and smiles and nods while I
Stare at his loafers, a little confused;
And the alley, a few blocks down,
I used as a bathroom stumbling from
The Detroiter to Locos more times
Than I had hoped, is now home
To some transient I do not know.

This is not my city, and this can not
Be my skin, stretched so loosely
And hung by such excess flesh; this
Is not my life, coherent and contained
Within the constraints of a nine to five,
A beloved son, child support paid on time
(or almost so), bill upon bill while I'm too
Busy with this and that to miss being high-
I'm more of a ghost than flesh and blood man.

From time to time I'm greeted with those
Old faces in these strange old places
Contorted in forms I scarcely recognize
With their sun graced complexions,
Rounder waists and small, beady eyes
And I wonder if their thoughts circle
Like a mirror making rounds at the table
-Just who we've become?

I wonder if they shake their heads in passing
All the places where all of what we knew happened
And, as I, hope they make it to bed early tonight.