a lonely incandescent bulb
hangs from the ceiling  
its loud light
no longer muted
by a bug filled dome
shattered years ago  
by a long armed drunken rage
or perhaps
by the silent sober passing of age  
only the room remembers  
the weary, the hopeful, the lost
who sit by the window
waiting to be found  
watching the tenacious tumbleweeds
skitter down the empty streets
dodging dust devils
on their way
to plaintive plains
and boiling brown sky
the new shiftless shifting home
of soil ****** dry
the gray graveyards
for drought drenched dreams  
of those who now sit in the
rent-by-the-week room
in incandescent gloom
staring
at a false prophetic sky
with no tears left to cry