smoke stacks babble their chemical love note to the gods,
huffing and clawing
and spewing their pumice
at the morning sky,
a milky stairway to heaven
dispatching
the greasy whims of a faceless man with an unquenchable addiction.

it towers over the overstuffed veins of the highway,
where a once square body
contorts its aluminum frame to mimic the spiraling form of nature,
spilling its fleshy guts into dry winter wind.
the steaming rubber neck of the world cranes itself
longer than the Mississippi
to gawk at its own mortality.

in the distance,
the steely blue city veils her face with haze,
stoic and sturdy, she stares into the thin air
past the ardent, bleeding
display of humanity
gushing
awkward onto her concrete stomach
and staining the stubbly black and beige
with sticky finger prints.

the city takes a long drag off her metallic cigarette
and sighs
exhaust,
blanketing the sky in morgue sheets.