Sand Castles in the Sky
by Odin Roark

Urban history extols itself.

Street level ambition…

Voracious resonance roils,
private life,
public life,
fever and chills sleeping together,
heaving corrosive air
from colorless lungs,
hearing but their own pleas for ecstasy,
their wails of rapacious cravings.

Rising higher…

Boardrooms and bedrooms
cling to manufactured essence,
obviating affliction’s chronicled past,
flesh bleeding continuum’s plague
irrigating yet more weed gardens
of delusional orchid and rose.

Reaching the top…

Isolation’s darkened windows remain locked,
seductive air of passion’s molt
mixes with the heat of covetous fantasy,
rapidly becoming gluttony's vaporous yesterday
rising through dream clouds
into illusion’s tempest becoming.

While far below…

Wailing sirens rise through the ether,
another of ambition's coronary disruptions
being rushed to death’s way station infirmary
about to be one less emergency burden,
one less victim of fast lane inexperience,
one less covetous plunderer
being saved from child-like disappointment,
unaware that even sand castles in the sky
succumb to ebb’s inevitable tide.

And in the middle…

For the many out of breath,
life becomes but a fools-gold treadmill,
creating unquenchable thirst,
insatiable hunger,
a sickness of virulent infection,
an urban one-percent-contagion
offering nickels and dime employment
to the battling updrafts of street despair,
where sidewalk survivors reaching skyward
bank their meager pocket change,
tearfully.

And even higher…

Secure in their sand castles in the sky,
these takers of all huddle close behind penthouse glass,
securing their panic,
denying the unknown dark,
sipping cognac,
turning up the Bang & Olufsen,
reading each other sonnets they understand little about.

As for reality’s life…

Distant sirens and horns continue through the night.