A space-age fortress of glitzy build
stands empty. It had once been filled
with shining futures of tinsel, milled
of bronze for a time that all would thrill.

How empty the future past now seems
behind the glass of wasted dreams:
Once polished steel now dimly gleams
and old high tech lies there unredeemed.

Its giant clock now standing still,
the hands unmoving, like hopes that will
remain as frozen in amber that’s filled
with flies of dreams: placebo pills.

Asphalt night
by red dawn’s light
descends into deepest fog.

A glimmer of bright
on the edge of sight
shimmers blue: I begin to walk.

Battered plaster,
shattered glass,
splintered rafters,
a crumbling mass.

You former home
of…who knows who?
who left to roam
away from you.

Now you stand
empty, broken
but look quite grand
in scars unspoken.

In a cathedral of stone, stark and white,
with a lone statue from long before.
It stands in a niche, with a soft spotlight
shining on its medieval decor.

A ****** Mary, with her Mona Lisa smile,
looks down from her pedestal high.
In quiet, I stand and gaze at her for a while.
Did I just hear her audibly sigh?

Her gilded robes are weathered, cracked,
the once bright paint’s faded and spare,
many scars made plain by shadows cast
by a red circle of candles lit by prayers.

What crises has this scarred Mary seen?
Her sighs echo ours: This statue’s hallowed
by the pains the prayerful to her bring.
I hail thee, marred Mary, full of our sorrows.

I stand in front of a stone library
that once held great knowledge therein,
but stands now empty under skies dreary.
I whisper a prayer for our sins:

Please, Lord, let the children who follow us
grow wiser than we ever were.
Let them yet be the loving kindness
that we have signally failed to confer.

I doubt that they will ever forgive us
for this fallen world that we’re handing down
thanks to all the blind disservice
by leaving little but ash on the ground.

Before us all stand two stone gates
each leading to diverging roads:
The one leads to our visible fate
while the other fate overthrows.

Please, Lord, let those born in these days
choose the path of the unknown
instead of taking the road that behind us lays:
They shall our foolishness swiftly outgrow.

What few blessings I may pass on to you,
O dear reader of the future’s present,
I give you freely in hopes of a new
rebirth in a world without end, amen.

Fifty years ago, the future came,
built in concrete, tile, and bright lights,
underground station, undergirding the fame
of this city, adding to its manifold sights.

Now the future’s a place that smells of stale beer,
barely lit by futuristic lamps in disrepair,
wallpapered in graffiti, strewn with gear
of the pale homeless who’ve made this their lair.

They, like this chipped, grimy, forsaken place
are left in the dust of our dreams’ mercury pace.

Palace in night fog
draped in a pale vestal sheen —
Moonlit débutante