Your responses to the last poem I posted -- re the 'Carnival' that a modern city represents -- are very heartening. T h a n k s !! As I mentioned in the introduction, the blight that strikes at or near dawn {as viewed from a train} was what I had intended to focus on. Couldn't let it go! 'Left out' is anything but a carnival. . .probably all too clear. Hope to offer something a little lighter next time. But. . .so much darkness, so little time? I am shutting up now. . .AM. . .
xox peace xox

 
It takes chain-smoking for the train
and me to make it through the unveiling
of one of the self-disfigured faces
of a feverish, drugged-to-sleep city
that has been encouraged to hide behind
an interchange and columns of smoke.
I have yet to see a sign identifies.
Scars bad, but what shakes is the feeling 
people have long been misused -- worse,
abused -- behind the factory windows
that have been white-washed over
to keep eyes from prying.  Too much
green lost as fields, pastures, and lawns
were gobbled by tracks and seeded
with gravel, and people turned to cogs
for a burgeoning machine.  How
many gains and losses do houses
that could double as lean-to’s speak
of with their skinny, up-and-down
porches and tomato-canned sale-flowers
wilting to brown for lack of time
to water?   Dirt on the ground, in the air,
and decaying brick and metal siding
and suggestion of unnatural stillness
whisper that farmers once looked upon
this land with the pride, guts, and know-
how to keep growing the best they could.
Teach their children to.  Trains like the one
clacking and huffing me to new classes
and a new love sped communication
and led to unheard-of luxury.  Other pluses,
one supposes.  But the price shows
in discarded iron shoes, rusted drums, rebars,
monster cranes, and just plain trash.
Buildings whose single saving grace
is they will do.  Smoke, fumes, and drinking-
water-headed poison and unidentified
lying objects. . .at last, humor comes to
my rescue.  If only it could rescue workers
from losing to planned obsolescence
and buck-the-bottom-line, but no.  Lives
of many as hard and gray as the asphalt
over there.  Here comes a sign.   Billboard
ad, billboard ad, billboard ad.  Still,
I’m getting glimpses of the pretty part.
Lights around perfect teeth grinning
at a fifth of Wild Turkey.   Fishing
out a weed, I light up.

 

            (c) Phyllis Jean Green, August, 2007

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