Baltimore Metaphor
I have seen the best minds
And beautiful bodies
Of four generations
Consumed by consumption
And too many souls
Bombing themselves into oblivion-
Blood rising into clear chambers,
Smoke entering aching lungs,
Powder rising to bleeding noses
To poison the pain.
Out of the halfway houses come
Pariahs staggering through
Angry streets
red eyed, fearful of the dawn
As with broken nails
They claw at the city’s flesh
Hoping for a few more hours without pain.
Living billboards
With Chinese symbols
Advertising emptiness
Needled into their skin
Offer themselves for sale
Along cracked curbs
World pain etching
Age lines on lost innocence.
In bull shops
The wealth of China
Piled, shelved and cheap
Oh so cheap
Are murder weapons
Masquerading as bargains
While suicides multiply
Among those who once worked
Labor hardened hands slough calluses
Work whetted wits grow dull
Dreams drown in underwater houses
Some turn their left cheek
And are struck on the right
Others turn their right cheek
And are struck on the left
And the blows rain down
Blood stains collars white and blue
Until the stricken fall to their knees
When they look up
There is a shining golden calf before them
Grinning, laughing in triumph
Before it explodes
Flaming flesh erupts
In a god fearing geyser
In see through towers above the mayhem
A privileged few
Born of a privileged few
Go through the painful ceremony
Of branding themselves
Then with taps
Of finely manicured fingers
They step to the web’s well kept curb
And announce they are for sale
To the whole wide world.
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