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(12-23)
Taut is the cord
Holding up a bare brace in the ceiling
Where collapse awaits
This is the kiss of fate
A dance on the precipice, until things slip away
Never again to greet the breaking day
A toe’s breadth from the narrow ledge
A needle lost in a thatch of decaying hedge
In front of an abandoned home in East Cleveland
Tears fall
There is a swath of paint sprayed across an interior wall
Where a family once sang together on Christmas Eve
An oath offered by gang affiliates who live in postmodern strife
Booyah! What a life!
Dirty faces and bling stolen from a jewelry store
Broken glass scattered on the floor
Somewhere a claims adjuster scratches out a signature
The cost is covered
While helicopters hover
And police sirens scream into the dark of night
At a ceremonial dinner, downtown
Lush with tuxedos and gold lame evening gowns
They ponder the divide
Prime Rib on a silver platter
While gunfire in the streets makes scrawny kids scatter
Blood on the bricks
Set free by pretentious pinpricks
Stuck in a municipal redevelopment map
A levy passed
To support the greater good
A pot of glue and a fresh coat of enamel
While homeless bums crash on the sidewalk, drinking Wild Irish Rose and smoking Camels
I might have imagined something like this
After feeling the sting of a Judas kiss
But somehow, from my side of the Cuyahoga River
These tragedies seem distant and surreal
Like slipping on a banana peel
In front of the Terminal Tower
I turned over my wrist
To check the hour
And realized with a startled expression
That the moment had already come and gone, in a rapid progression
From that first canoe full of settlers
To the decline of a sparking electric line
Swinging from the pole
Cut the lance
Take a fool’s chance
Throw dice down the boulevard and listen to those spotted cubes bounce and break
Newspaper bonfires cooking bologna steaks
Below freezing, the mercury falls
A touch of frost on quivering balls
Garbage bags over a cardboard hovel
A canvas tarp propped up with a flat-blade shovel
While television reporters gawk and gasp
Getting background video footage for the nightly newscast
It’s Armageddon at last
Stillness grips the vacuum of unintended consequence
While miscreant onlookers peer over a construction fence
‘Coming soon!’ boasts a sign
Printed at a shop not far from the Lake Erie coastline
A financial investment put together by barons of the trade
A temple built where beggars used to stay
Wrapped in thrift store donations
Hand-me-down garments trucked in from another town
Across the state line
Watching the wheels turn
A generator surge
A neighborhood purge
A wrapper from Taco Bell crushed up and stuck in a shoe without a toe cap
A bread bag for a scarf, in lieu of a jacket flap
Cold on the bricks
Colder still, in the pale light of politics
The mayor gives a speech to his attentive, inner circle
The dude looks strangely like sitcom star Steve Urkel
But I won’t say that out loud
Fearing a tongue-lashing rebuke
Like waves lapping the stones of a waterfront porch stoop
The braided hemp surrenders its grasp
Which precipitates a noisy, rotted-roof collapse
This east side carousel ride comes to an end
Goodnight, my friend
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