Beggar Poem by Elizabeth Robinson

"Don't try changing my convictions; I'm lucid."
If I don't give you the shirt off my back,
at least I can stand on the street corner and turn it
inside out for you.
You are invited to see the dander of the person who once
lived inside.
But even as I promise this, I feel
fatigue smothering me,
this labor of speaking to you who
are no longer.
I remember only my voice falling into your outstretched hand.
There was only my pledge:
the garment of your hand put asunder
inside the garment of my word, a garble.
Any day now I expect you to rise off the dirty cot
I've imagined for you. Lazarus, my beloved,
whose name I've surmised, whose genesis falls
before my sad stutter as my voice lifts you
with its mistaken hand, crying, "Get up, Lucifer!"