Municipal Warrants
Against such killing
Sidewalks go empty
Concrete to heart
Some grids are not supreme
Gray, black, smoke colored sedan
Black, blind-tinted windows, skeletal bullet cracks
No license plate, mud colored rims
The backseat gunner, The Street Sweeper
One dives in & out of commuter lanes
Blocks an intersection, blocks an artery
Snorts, retools the map
Concave dented doors, hood & trunk
Without a license, aggress or escape
The Planning Commission
Is out of session
So is Permits, Appeals:
The Civic Courts stay open
Civil suits yield to penury
Homeless garnish thin wages
Recent veterans refuse to stand
Streets tower the flow of litter
Mannequins in the once pretty garment shop
Lie naked, remarkably stripped
Screeching crows in an unaligned assemblies
Scissor dark clouds on the low horizon
Nothing unifies the sparrows or mourning doves
Branches in the lower bushes twist, crash, collide
Corporate entity buildings bamboo the sky
Needlepoint helicopters deliver executives
To rooftop pads greeted by white security:
What rises in the Mid-east rises in the West
Barrel by barrel, gallon by gallon, logos only mask
Sweet crude can be so stark paid for in the nude
Art decks hallways, windowless boardrooms
Some decisions are not so obvious until made
Porters in black coats deliver coffee, ham sandwiches
Crisp rye bread; the jaws are terse
One man’s options, then another’s
Evacuate, slip, vanish, totally empty the public tray
Surveillance remains a viable subject
Blue lights flash constant alerts
Crime trouble, crime trouble
The psychic arteries infested, clarity
Without a clue, whatever is not
Suffocates the paradox: the civic gone blind
What is true binds not, the Center
Bound by a loose, twirling wing-nut
Presides over a choir to terror
Upon terror upon terror. Someone
In a bayside dinghy throws bucket
Upon bucket - fresh red herring on the waters.
Sea Gulls plunge, arise and shit like crazy
Atop the Queen’s ship, soldiers and navy.
Boom-Boxes gush out intentionally bad music
Under, over & through rhythmically falling fecal matter
Love troubles no poems in the Empire
Money & lust grapple for the last private client
Wingless, the enemy’s planes collapse, sad counter foils
To once gold, burnished municipal ornaments. It’s over.
Some say nobody sees the end but The End Sees Us.
Others say, no empire ever goes, ever survives unbroken
Songs & poems but shelter and mirror relentless sorrow.
Stephen Vincent
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