There is a certain unplaced quality to the whole thing
Like it was never planned to look as it does
And the fact that it is the part that we aren’t supposed to see has always appealed to me
The ripples and cracks
Fissured by time
As a clash between flux and permanence
And will bent by entropy
A rusted staircase like a lonely island dangling and looking weak and unsafe
And who knows maybe it is
For the paint is chipped black frosted like ice
But it is hot and the air is heavy
As it always feels in a place like this
For there is rapture in a place that feels like it does not belong
And like you do not belong there
I contemplate the number of feet that stood right where I stand
I think about the installation of such things
I think about the man who stood and wrote his name in paint
About how that got bent like that
About when that wall fell down and when that glass broke
The stories that touched this particular spot only for that brief moment
The stories in which this is not even a footnote
Where the organic flux meets the rigid industrial
And all coalesces into a barren scape hidden away
And forgotten for it fits in neither picture
As the romance of the days that it saw beautifully have long been realized as nostalgic and useless
And a brick may fall and hurt someone
Or they may just tip their hat and continue on their way
But despite all these things I have a sense of blindness
And sublime captured by a world of temporary distinction