Christ Among the Broken Glass

Under skyscrapers
 And shopping cart tents
 Late in the year
 When the temperature drops
 Down snowy streets
 Among the broken glass
 You can find Christ
 Feeding the poor
 With what little he has left
 Frosted spoons of baby food
 Pushed into mouths
 Lips purple with addiction
 God is here with His son
 Where the wind cracks blue faces
 And the makeup freezes
 Carrying the loads of the poor
 By parallel canals of ice
 Down along one of those ripping streets
 He's scraping together whatever he can
 Snow ground under his fingernails
 Cobbling together syllables
 Over a frostbitten tongue
 Trying to remember the prayers
 Frankincense burns in garbage cans
 Between feuding beggars
 And vodka nips
 There he is in his frigid rags
 Jesus of cities
 Dragging last year's bells around his feet
 Go ahead, he says
 Go before me
 Whose turn is it
 With the flashlight
 Down in the hole tonight?