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