The public square
Historic edifices,
Domes and alabaster
Domes and alabaster
Shining...
Like glimmering mausoleums
In a dark necropolis
Where the dead and those
Half dying
Trudge indifferently
Past used-clothes stores,
Boarded up doors, and
Cheap chinese knick knacks -
And each other -
In a headlong rush to nowhere,
Unseeing...
Some sit and babble
Nonstop
From sidewalks
In a running scream
That no one -
Least of all themselves -
Understands
Like a human eddy
They swirl
Round glorious buildings
Civic monuments, stately domes
Where red-head parrots and dirty pigeons
Smear the lapiz azuli tiles
With their droppings
Brown wraps
Bandage blood-donor wounds
As plasma sellers totter
Down piss-stained sidewalks
Toward the cheap chicken-leg quarters store
A second-hand metropolis
Of a second-rate state
Used to being used
And sold,
And bartered
Down the mud-brown river
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