He walks the street of another dead city. Body still ringing, charge building dissipates/slow steady pace constant, the wheels revolve rolling, devouring miles and dreams shift, illusions drift windmill tilt, tattered threads the sunshines through. Familiar recession sprawl, savage disinvestment campaign, monopoly enforced scarcity polarizes and concentrates, leaves behind cheap track housing and gutted schools, weedy urban lots and tenement housing, military bases and bus stations, the unending procession of corner liquor stores. Razor wire delineates these abandoned streets, occupied by the have-nots and the left-behind, behind the media mask behind the facade corruption saps and sickens. The American dream, steeped in contradiction, an unfinished task of imagining “we the people” as distinct from structuring systems of domination, white privilege that breeds sadistic k-imperialism, now hollowed out, a bone whistle emits this sad and lonely sound.
new year’s day is an arrival home, the midafternoon sun glance slant yellow crash ink blue and sea foam cold Pacific wind beats waves arrive and retreat, sand scattering, sound shattering smooth round rocks granite tumbles mountain crumbles, top rolls to the sea. Settles here, one of heaped millions sculpted and scrubbed, mineral slough salt wash. The city flashes cross the bay to the west, crowned now, veiled in light unreachable, mirage shimmers/shadow dwellers marvel at the edges of exchange, the dull scrape digging, digging and losing this backward process stripping what lacks and imagined decadence grows cheaper. They just cut it, thin it out a little more, synthetic filler and plastic composites a strange nostalgia, choking on waste chock full of toxins and heavy metals. We’ll just forget, bury the past, but those seeping drums have forgotten how to hold together such corrosion and heedless accumulation. We’ve whittled it down, paper thin, a razor’s edge: binary, oppositional. Austerity ethics leave us choosing, loosing options, illicit propositions, short-sighted greed numbs, the spectacle offers proof but this precarious moment limned with irony cannot be shaken from the surreal veneer. Consensus fray beats on the deaf state, global megalopoly digs in its’ heels. Carefully avoid mention mass-suicide slaughter.
Long after sunset the night crawls beneath humid rainstorms, water window beads weakly beats petroleum-soaked concrete. Rubber tires squeak sidewalks ooze their residue, the whirling slap of tire treads, droning percussion the cars punch time, cigarette butts, plastic bags and bottles pool careening in the gutters. It’s always garbage night, rotten food and cardboard, after the worker bees have scurried home our hopes remain ripe, uncontained,adventure loving expression-seeking. Step outside, be overcome, gaggle above at the buildings, modern cityscape corporate skyscrape, braced and barricaded skywalks and private parking for the management team that divvies up, dumbs down, inveterate, steals our state, our power. Bedazzled city streets push in on all sides, glass shards reflect rigid institutional, born amidst this, heirs to biotechnology, the service economy, collapse to this stark vista, will not resolve. We are the ants to them above, overconfident in projected returns, the chloroform haze of contract and patent law.
Mother nature rinses the concrete patch wistfully, shakes her head as the filth rolls. Sheds a tear – the seeds are thirsty for human touch, the earth lies ill-treated, poorly conceived crime, rapine ego greed, the devil’s deal – passive consumerism we strap on, but when it comes to belt-tightening, the gluttons are relentless.
Police cruisers sentinel pass white and black flash of light streetlights sickly sodium flare endless rows parking meters abandoned lots closed storefronts.
