entering year 2000
rewinding vhs tape
installing napster client
anticipating victorious gore
bursting dot-com bubble
blocking tomorrow's nostalgia
commemorating festival tragedy
examining supersonic concorde
watching election coverage
recounting inconvenient truths
puzzling interface design
booing nuc-u-lar president

rising black monolith
editing non-linear encyclopedia
feeling inaugurally bushed
reliving century's dawn
unchanging state flag
processing royal massacre
escaping insane asylum
sensing impending collapse
perusing city guide
collapsing contemporary structures
initiating quixotic peacekeeping
ignoring conscription threats

entering year 2002
reporting unfortunate pearl
relaxing shotgun porch
exploding roadside bombs
addressing thousand followers
hugging financial meltdown
writing resembling skylines
shocking archipelagic bursts
processing theatrical disaster
tightening homeland security

entering year 2003
proliferating elegant telegnosis
rejecting freedom fries
blazing wartime trails
toppling dictatorial statue
unfurling "mission accomplished"
handling continental blackout
ejecting coronal masses

entering year 2004
flashing multiple sobriquets
populating dorm-roomy website
high-grossing aramaic movie
generating tunnel vision
rushing national anthem
parading goth athletes
letting games begin
accepting soviet passports
continuing obscure flumadiddle
lunar-eclipsing world series
two-terming republican regime
declining personality cult
glowing orange revolution
eroding periglacial drumlins
inundating lacustrine basins
exciting geomorphological processes
enduring tumultuous tsunami

entering year 2005
blasting "galvanize" repeatedly
unforgiving cyclonic scenario
printing controversial drawing
sketching cartoon prophet
overturning hurricane alphabet
rigging medal count
preparing new horizons
rejecting flash sites

entering year 2006
setting plutonian destination
synchronizing new horizons
sighting stellar foison
maintaining feudal system
emerging microblogging service
reading ancient tweets
rotating golden statue
mounting social debt
protesting planetary demotion
forecasting catastrophic recession
executing "innocent" dictator

entering year 2007
declining share prices
building ruby railroad
lifting presidential term-limits
perpetuating oil-rich dictatorships
falling interstate bridge
slugging giant bonds
clothing blackwater mercenaries
disappearing internet personalities
unforgiving writers strike

entering year 2008
stealing variable thunders
relaxing domain names
letting games continue
exploding sunrise propane
requesting birth certificate
electing another suit
disappointing orthodox republicans
microblogging maximal meltdown

entering year 2009
inaugurating new president
encountering bear markets
cackling risible laughter
dying pop king
deleting neolithic internet

entering year 2010
collapsing presidential palace
prospering cinematic avatar
pronouncing eyjafjallajökull effortlessly
"kettling riot police
flaming cop cruiser"
blasting text-based vuvuzelas
leaking diplomatic cables
fading pre-twitter memories
self-immolating street vendor

entering year 2011
"enervating nine-point quake
propagating harbor wave
inundating nuclear plant
irradiating unclear fates"
raging mid-eastern spring
throwing body asea
locating trojan asteroid
penetrating financial throughfare
resonating oral amplifier
blazing verdant material

entering year 2012
rising chubby dictator
gentrifying weird twitter
exploding next month
intriguing "fake" passport
proliferating single-hued avatars
surging sandy cyclone
inhabiting alternate universe
manipulating another election
rigging people's ballots
perpetuating manipulated world
fulfilling megalomaniac urges
surviving previous apocalypse
surviving another baktun

entering year 2013
descending rogue meteor
encoding festival weekend
obfuscating's very own
approving snow den
searching yaya island
soaking wet veld

entering year 2014
missing plane geometry?
annexing peninsular territory
printing powdered medication
forecasting meteoric boomtime
prevailing monochromatic identity
avoiding aviation accidents
determining auspicious date
revising deactivation plans

Times Square was once a ****** place;
You wouldn’t go alone there.
When darkness fell, you held on or
You’d lose all that you owned there.

Today, though, it’s like Disney World,
With tourists, loud and surging.
There’s not an inch of space unfilled
Since everyone’s converging:

The families from Idaho,
The hawkers giving passes,
The Elmos and the messengers,
The bused-in high school classes…

The lunch-break workers, homeless dudes,
The theater geeks and shoppers,
The food carts, cabbies and the cops
And all the teenyboppers.

I love New York; don’t get me wrong
But oftentimes I wonder
If gentrifying Broadway
Might have been a whopping blunder.

you open up the newspaper
that declares another man
has taken what wasn’t his.

‘disappointing,’ you mutter,
turning the page.
‘look at the world, today.’

‘today?’ i ask,
a voice so small.
small as we have always felt.

open up a history book,
read it.
no, not those white men
gentrifying the world.

those women.
the ones of every colour,
orientation, size and class.

now, sir, do you understand?
those men are every man.
those women are every woman.

today is every day.

It's getting to be posh
all these new folk
with their dosh.
buying up the property
leaving nowt
for you and me.

It's not the same
not as it was
because,
our street's got
a brand new name.
'Petunia close'
sounds like a dose of something bad,
awful sad,
that it's getting to be a bit posh round here,
next year,
I won't recognise
the pie and mash shop
the garage pit stop
it will all be gucci,reebok
smoochy bars,
fast and frantic tarty cars.

I'm moving out to Birmingham
at least up there they still
eat spam,
I may move further North to Carlisle
they'll not change
not for a long while.

Anyway
I made a fortune
holding on
not selling too soon.

(The problem is,
not the solution
or gentrifying
or more pollution
it's the weeding out
and in their place
making space for
evolution)

As we walk the blazing black asphalt,
manicured and graded for modern passage,
we can scarcely imagine these same footsteps,
trod by General McClellan and traversed
by the very fugitives that he fought to free.

The civil peace was broken when the machinery came,
ripping railroad ties and spikes from her gut,
erasing and smothering the Confederate footsteps,
gentrifying the mud for our convenience,
replaced by the smooth tar of unification.

This new Mason-Dixon did not divide peoples;
it conected communities.

Now on our bikes we don our spandex and lycra in Alexandria -
no shoveling of coal for this engine -
with a sip of our energy elixir,
whizzing over the Sycolin bridge and past Tuscarora Creek,
quickly turning around in Purcellville for the return trip.

bid me follow, unbutton that grimy work shirt,
present me ruby nippled *******, silently commanding
worship, suckling, an invitation to come unto me,
my initiation to the pleasure of getting to know you intime

you will laugh with surprise, as the anointing oil of relief
crowns your head, slicking down to caving cavities,
river running in crevices, that feed the buried places,
replenishing the almost forgotten secret of letting go

your pleasure is my greatest pleasure, for long known
the best taking lies beneath unabashedly giving, gentrifying,
you will full fill me, me eager drinking your noises, releasing
my purposes, coming to take my re-education you remedying

your short fingernails will pierce, new additions to my scars,
my history, your chapter, verse and stanza, all now, a claim upon me, that cannot be refused, for elemental silk threads now bind, each may pull, at either end, for the thread is of our singular commonality,
human tissue

Crooked cops
Crop-dusting
Walking dead drops
Set up shop
Cracking rock
The crime lords of the block,
Never stopping
Mass production
Mass incarcerate
Consumption
Just repackaged
And reformed it
Into urban deconstruction
Underfunded housing project
For an upper
Classpiration
Gentrifying
Higher rises
Like a fentanyl
Sedation
Running rampant
Through the streets
And through the flesh and bone
It eats
And as the door comes crashing down
Its execution
Is complete
And so in summary
Impunity
With which it gets away
Has ever been
And ever will be
Making freedmen
Into slaves