Rose coloured skies to cover the grime oozing over the surface As yellow paint slicks onto the sea of black tar A weak barrier against the smog The trees line the golden ring The sun has bound around the earth Until the city skyline glows that irrefutable shade of orange That chases away the moonlight and the birds and the roses Leaving behind an outline of skeletal mustiness and misery A graveyard of ashes rising above The grey fermented pavement, a canvas of footsteps and broken pieces Ashes on streets, ashes in lungs Ashes inside and around and above and below Death lingers over the cinderblock garden These buildings are gravestones, the streets run with grey The cremation of love and lips and lies This place is a dying forest of falling branches As a body slumps and falls, another rises through To push above the skyline of bones And become part of that rosy heaven above
Every footfall draws another drop of sweat While each rise of a chest leaves blood running Down cheeks like the tears of statues The people don't talk, the birds choke on their melodies Notes like worms as they force themselves up throats Puked like stringed sentences of lies and misfortune Splattering the tarmac like injustice on heartstrings That have hardened to rods of steel Indifferent to acidic tears and rose petals The dust flies like spit In clouds through the alleyways Clinging and stinging eyes, ******* shut Drying loose tongues and filling open mouths 'Till they choke and they have to speak around Every word they ever wished to speak You have no safe breaths under this sky There are no safe words you can ever say Under the falling roses
You've become a statue Your eyes don't cry as they used to This place has changed you, has warped your mind These streets of everlasting dust They've stripped you down and built you back With crumbling bones and brittle skin And muscles that have been pulled taught Your face is sallow plastic Moulded by those you swore to hate You've become their toy, you're their little project To twist and try and test The streets melt beneath your feet Pavement rippling and scorching It's poisoning you, toxic and tasteless These streets of never ending lust For blood, for bone, for a brittle crown Of a falling castle, a burning council The roses are falling rotten Petals upon the darkening road The roses are falling rotten The roses falling from the dust-filled sky