Walking these streets
My feet stick to the pavement
Wet with blood and ***

The air thick and stagnant
Settling in the lungs like ash
All around are seas of broken glass
And scattered shards of dreams

Children with vacant eyes
Playing at gutter wars
Their miniature armies
Filling the night with screams

Teenage existentials
Nursing junk habits
Prepubescent mothers
Trading food stamps for ****

Beggars with cellphones
Pacing the medians
Pigs in blue getting head
In silent stairwells

Boarded up windows
Keeping secrets in
And all hope out

Silent mills
Desolate railroad tracks
Stretching forth to nowhere

Boulevards of desperate shadows
Vacant lots and empty playgrounds
Burnt out tenements
Foreclosures and yellow tape

Slouching back to my room
An overflowing ashtray
And walls that sigh
All night long

I settle in, laying back on my bed
With its familiar creaks and groans
Thinking of my far away love
Who will someday lift the darkness from these streets.