Requiem For A Dying City

In these human ruins
marking time with helpless anger
makes the differences between
this world and the next
seem almost bearable.

Where the clime marks bloody rust
on blasted shoreline factories
deep-anchored in the broken flesh
of slowly rotting city
in its final death-throes,

the hollow houses all collapse
in slow-festering abandon
few could stop and fewer want to,
where eyeless walls stare vacant
at the empty streets,

and roofs fall slow
beneath indifference's
growing weight
to add more broken ruin
to the pools of aging dark
between remaining streetlights
failing on forgotten corners.

Doors are locked
against the predatory stare
from hopeless eyes
of passing urban refugees
desperate for another meal
or another fix,

and in the growing cancer
spreading outward from
abandonment and pain
we pass but do not listen,
pass by but do not see
that in the shameful end
this is where we really dwell,
at this lowest point of all.