Mister Ebberman Poem by Norman F. Santos

In the bloodcurdling stretch of blind alleys
Akin to thawing sewers reeking with malice
A moniker, a sobriquet, his ambiguity hocked
Mister Ebberman, he sat like a frozen rock
A forlorn rummy with a violent brandy on his left
And on his right, a rod apt for a conceptual theft
Mister Ebberman, sober and pale as the liquor
Held his heart on the seams with flagrant squalor
Mister Ebberman mused past the stagnant river
Darker than the black bile of his abused liver
As he cajole to steadfast his ambidextrous hands
Trembling like the rocks of the floor, cold and bland

From under the river where winter rest its arms
And the albino sun forgot to provide with warmth
Mister Ebberman prayed in his vehement silence
He cowered and sighed for his river’s decadence
Pensively, he waited amidst the toppling milieu
To reel in a fish and hope back in the view
Though his wan lethargic bait had failed to lure
And left sobriety as something too obscure
Yet he held on his rod like and almighty king
With a scepter augmented to a lissome string
Taking pleasure in his pseudo-revelry clandestinely
Mister Ebberman’s eyes grew a little bit too tawny

Canoes with mutual oars will always past and glide
Mister Ebberman’s stance in a coveting rueful stride
And with a gas lamp illuminating scarcely with the misery
That would blind his eyes form the drifting mirthful party
That tinkers inside interlaced fingers of lovers in fancy
And he would waft brooding to avert the guffawing idiocy
With atrocious mobility, he would vie for a languid night
Where he can never fold his eyes so he can write
With his rod as his plumage and the river as his page
And haul out one worthy dime before he desiccate with age
And the colossal rats gnash on his downtrodden moccasins
Mister Ebberman, can you really picture a handsome scene?

Frantic mister, how long have you been wishing?
And how often do you pull out from your fishing?
Desperate fisher, it will never reimburse your endeavor
To seek in a river long subdued in a deathful pallor.
Mister Ebberman, your hands are charred and calloused
From cleaving faithfully into a scythe fashion too spruced
With your downtrodden fedora screening your iron eyes
You would never reel in all the time that ticks and flies
In your gossamer refuge, could you forever hide?
In a guise of an ebberman pensively stumbling for the tides
To dispense your succulent faith of bogus fate and find
That there’s an ocean of amiable strings you have left behind.