. The Poet's Beat .

. The Poet's Beat .

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Detroit

A lightening storm in MoTown...


Detroit is burning,
and no one will notice,
no one’s around,
an empty metropolis whose desolate rain-filled streets

are limbs blue with a pulse too faint to detect,
architecture abandoned to Motown’s ghosts,
our footsteps echo off the boarded windows,
closed for an imaginary season with no end,
echo off the growing puddles,
and are swallowed by the dead night,
one solitary light blinking an angry hopeless red against the clouds,
far above us where no one looks,
a last vestige of memory,
calling home the lost denizens,
signaling the rocks of disaster,
defying the decay,

Detroit is a vacant shell,

smoldering in the after-effect embers of an inferno whose fury

sizzled out long ago,
the concrete skeletal remains of a once regal beast,
the Ritz-Carlton and the MGM Grand but shadows of a former glory,
one a haven for the few travelers who dare to

wander those deserted canyons of corporate greed,
one a jingling nightmare whose dazzling maw ensnares the oldest

destitute grandmas and grandpas –
drying them of the little life they have left,
beacons of the void,
stunning structural remains that refuse to belly up and die,

A claw of lightening scratches from the sky,

jagged brilliant lasso,
it bites hard and quick at a radio antenna above a lifeless office tower,
thunder explodes in our chest,
a warning,
not even cities are safe,
from the greatest to the least,
the world freezes in a single resplendent snapshot of glamour,
it seems brilliant and illuminated,
awakened from the dark,
so that even the rain drops sparkle and are jewels

thrown against the sidewalk,
for but a moment,
a priceless second,
an eternal dream,
shattered,
thunder rattles our bones and punches us in the guts,
the world becomes black,
the streets once again swell with wasted rain water endlessly eroding

this place from existence,
one solitary light still blinking an angry hopeless red against the clouds,
waiting for them all to come back,
steady vigil on the horizon,
the song of some lost lover,
but this city is dead,
no one’s around,
and no one is coming back.

7.2010


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