Poetry: Truck it up

melted vinyl siding resembles
fried egg metaphors when
this is what your block
looks like on the 6 o'clock news
sizzling after some sainted sinner
torched another abando
to keep it vacant of vagrants.

The thanks goes out unsaid to neighbors.
After they sweep away the problems, we
smear the lots with litter. After all these years,
victory is bitter. But
that's not what anyone cares to consider,
desensitized for the next 10 months
of their lives with a smug smile
waiting for the city to dig out
the soggy stank of charred timbers.

And when they finally do,
they truck it up
and gouge a bigger pit
to sit and wait until shady contractors
get paid and it gets filled in
with trash and dirt and sand.
This is land of the brownfields
and home to the brave.

In mean times
with lifelines drained,
condemned Capitalists
scramble to scrap heavy metals
and feed growing Rock City habits
by dismantling their habitats.

The road to shame
is paved thru a place
of pride and exaggerated danger.
Apathy overtakes anger while
the whole town licks its lips
at the thought of
a wealthy stranger.

Matchstick tempers tend
the flame with cellphone
cameras raised to catch
a past erased and the birth
of post-industrial prairie phase.
One hand to press record,
the other hiding cold sweat
above a guilty gaze.

Fame is a horrible thing
to strive for because it leaves
room for exploitation and
Youtube video stars
filling channels with their collected
ruin porn.
Sometimes I feel like
it would have been
better to just not be born.

Better than this
anxious existence and
self portrait as scorn.
This city sharpens halos into horns.
Ctrl, alt, arson, mourn.

You see, it's
better for demolitions to NSP —
Enter, C/P, delete. space.
Better than the truth
we've had to face,
some learn to love,
others never learn, just live to hate.