Prosperity

Upheaval is in this state of mind
Shunned by the others, defined by his crimes,
Heinous and famous, or infamous
Whichever pleases.
Infectious and restless
With nameless diseases.
Meaningless prices
Wound with cruel devices
Demises
like rusted springs, wound too tight

City.

With the first frost, though we’re lost,
The ice is thin, the cracks
Beside the fall, nothing
Ever changes, rearranges, at best
But makes things worse.
All the same to him;

City, covered in grime.

Sewers and quitters and Indian givers
Waiting for the bus to come
Masses in the rain, pain
It abounds, frustration and hunger
For power
For self-reliance, for love.

City, denied love.

Among the soot-men, the
Grease-women, and the mud child,
He stalks, he walks
The scent of the desperate entices him,
He, gluttonous, devours them all
The trash-boy, the mouse-girl
Indiscriminant

City, the flotsam eater.

He wards them all. The hunting ghoul,
Wrapped in white sheets, outlined with chalk.
Glass and steel tombs, reflective
Of the festering, the malicious, the sludge eating.
Thorough underground fields, sowed with seeds of hate
And injustice, the view from a dead man’s eyes
Moves the gears, the grinding machinery, dripping oil,
That motivates this massive rusted device.

City, prosperous.