They are all the Stonehenge slabs waiting
to topple over, granite foundation
of the cosmic cardhouse.
Expressionless: blank stares
Like the ceiling of the sky with
wall-to-wall cloudless gray
Warmed over with a vague upset -
The sun still tries its damnedest
Underneath the folds somewhere

Some of the grim flock re-picturing
bedspreads they snuck under with
lovers passed on long-since
(Stop, dash, as good as dead
Dash, stop, resume again)
They felt trapped,
they motioned Your Honor for bust-out.
New apartments, new partners,
new town centers eventually
seemed all the same and they
were stricken apathetic:
dead end

New installations of municipal plotting
erected in a Cold War mindframe,
Brutalism put to shame.
Rising above an alma mater
Those who stayed pass by,
Itinerants late-stage en-route
To spiritual tent cities to remain.
Rising above the rest of town
Squinting producing the pitched
Concrete walls, the barbed wire vein
Circulating among borders
Teeth of ******* razorblades.

Another life they’d never graduate
Now all that’s left is ponzi schemes,
billiard hellscapes accented with
deep-discount tobacco flames,
greasy spoons caddy-cornering
shuttered gas stations with their
mummified attendants left
moaning with desire from
beneath the boards:
Broken glass glints on felled horizons
of the ever-present post-industrial plains
What a waste slog on what a waste
What a waste slog on what a waste
Your Honor we request another stay
Your Honor we request another stay