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Dec 2013
Skyscrapers jut towards the heavens
middle fingers to Mother Nature
or sun-bleached white ribs of some poor beast
who tangoed with a toyota
and lost.

The stench that wafts through the streets could easily strip paint
but the locals don't seem to mind.
They march through their mundane Mondays
like maggots in goose-step.
The cacophony of their carrion communion is grisly and deafening.

Garish billboards burn
obscene advertisements onto assaulted retinas.
Street salesmen descend upon naive tourists
like vultures after fresh meat.

Policemen **** and pillage
what they were sworn to protect and serve,
and the Mayor's fungal tendrils
reach deep into the criminal underbelly of his city.

The voracious human hunger for wealth
knows no boundaries.
The grey-on-grey urban tragedy that is this concrete corpse
is always changing. Growing. Advancing.
however, it is not without waste.

Abandoned asphalt arteries stretch as far as the eye can see.
Somewhere, in a derelict parking lot, a flower is blooming.

We may spit in the face of Mother Nature
with every tree we cut and river we dam,
but soon she will be the one laughing
over our shattered
concrete
corpses.
This is a revision of a previous poem I wrote, Cycle of the City, that ended up going in a completely different direction. I'm pretty satisfied with the result.
Raymond Johnson
Written by
Raymond Johnson  Maryland
(Maryland)   
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