A Fight on the Corner of Avenue and Street - a poem

A man waved his hand and demanded
to be picked up by a passing taxi cab
but the taxi cab demanded that the man
stand there and wave as a series of polite
escalations that erupted into violence
because one ended up spitting on the other
but I will not write here who spit on who
only that it ended with the cab driver
just fine and the man waving his hand
with a black eye and three broken fingers
and for the sake of his privacy I will say
the name of only one of the fingers
and that is the ring finger on his left hand.

A while later amidst a rush of co-workers
the man with the broken hand tripped and fell
and collided down the stairs but didn't have fingers
to grab the railing and break his fall. He found himself
lost to the wilds of his mind unable to move
or properly breathe without gurgling the air
like a babe.

After a day and half of the incident the cab driver
who had been feeling rather rough with the altercation
with the waving man, took a beer from his fridge
and sat on the sofa with his feet upon his coffee table
that he never had coffee on. He took a cigarette
from the pack in his pocket, and lit it with a zippo
lighter he had purchased from the corner store.

And as the cab driver exhaled his smoke,
the waving man welcomed his full body cast
and laid in bed a bit more relieved but no better for wear
than he had been the day previous.

The cab driver ate some lunch and commented
to his lover that he felt rather store on his cheeks
but this was due to him laying funny on his hand
in his sleep and nothing to do with the fight
that occurred in the streets.