Vladimir Augustin, whom some may remember from an April post, walked into John Siscoe’s Globe Bookstore, looking cold and a bit blurred around the edges.

He writes poems on cards for passersby and lives rough. For the most part, the tourist trade has dried up, but he carries a small boombox (which was playing a Mozart concerto), and continues scavenging for customers.

John gave Augustin a postcard of the Space Needle and when I found him in front of the soon to be evacuated Elliott Bay Bookstore, he wrote me another poem. It was night and hard to decipher under the streetlight, but he read it to me aloud. ‘A Masterpiece of Christmas’ he called it, and I’d share it with you but I can’t quite make out the script.

UPDATE:

As per Maria’s request, a photo of the postcard poem — ‘A Masterpiece of Christmas’ – note it contains an acrostic: “The Collective Purpose” (click to enlarge):