On occasion, life among the lowest dregs reveals something powerfully amazing. Tonight, as I stood outside smoking my wretched cigarettes, I was approached, as I often am, by someone adrift through the pitiless night. This man stopped, addressing me in a scholarly tenor withered slightly by his advanced age, and introduced himself as Osiris "master poet, painter of oil on canvas, and world scholar." I curse my feeble brain, for I can't remember half of what the man said, though all this took place not 5 minutes ago. He told me, and all this is true, that I had the most wonderful beard he had ever seen on a citizen of the world, and that I was possess of "a mental acumen sharper than the edge of a sabre sword." He asked if I would not be adverse to hearing a recitation, and asked if his recitation could by chance garner a small donation. I said it would, and for me this is unusual. My opinion regarding the masses straying idly through the dark, misdeeds and maladjustments provoking their every action and reaction to the world around them, always desperately gnashing through the drug addled haze for some addled soul to leech another fix off of is decidedly against. I'm no humanist in this regard. Compassion and goodwill are virtues, but generally speaking charity to an evil person is a discharity to the world at large. But I digress.
I told Osiris, a stick thin man in a blue suit coat and red scarf, his tightly curled beard gone to grey to match his closely cropped pate, speech hissing and teeth missing, movements jerky and manner erratic, that a recitation would indeed see donation, and he began. Again, I twice curse my own addled brain for it's goldfish memory, because Osiris launched headlong into a series of poetic recitations with vigor and vim, gesturing softly and speaking in a rapid stoccato. He moved from place to place, praising sadness and rain, exalting the skies and the earth. I listened in rapt attention, knowing all the while that my pathetic brain was allowing this to fall from it like water off the proverbial. I was moved by this, the entire scene. Knowing all the time I would never begin to be able to recall the things the man had said verbatim, this silver tongued poet continued on, line after line, silver ships and flowers in the field he recited. It was beautiful.
My cigarette finished along with his poetry and I handed him 20 dollars. I wish I could give him something more meaningful than money, but it's what he wanted. He pushed my hand back, eyes going wide at the sight of Andrew Jackson's murder-happy face in green on my palm, and announced, "Osiris the master poet is not finished reciting!!!" He straightened up, gaze fixed on the middle distance, but words wouldn't come to him. He began to weep softly and kissed me on the cheek. I hugged the man. He told me that I was God's own arm. I told him I was just an appreciator of craft. He told me that he didn't know what brought him there that night, but whatever it was it was important. I might agree. I opened the door and bid him godspeed, and he was away into the night.
