Cities

The dreams of a shiny gold locket

to commemorate the passing of your fiftieth year has long gone.

A reused string of paper clips in its place.

This city belongs to its inhabitants and they belong to it.


A swift rush moves by,

the dust unsettling and resettling in the place they had just left.

The city that housed no change.

No new creations or images.

Replacing vapid changes,

there is the continuous recycle of what has been reused already,

by grandmothers, sisters, great uncles.


In secret compartments of their brain, they rebuild.

Manufacturing a city of such shine and stature it will never get old, but this is the problem

they have already dealt with.

The nuance of new-ness was what demolished the town long ago; or so it is said.

No one can quite remember.


Once someone ran away. He would return to tell tales of what awaited us on the other

side of the fence: hard asphalt, motors, cardboard boxes thrown in landfills each day.


Dreams.


It was believed that he returned because of stupefaction of the neon lights, and blinding

shine of what was beyond us had become too much.

It was only to warn us.

He left after etching in the dirt, words that read our lives would not be spared if we were

open to change.


The wind picked up and dusted over his message before it gave us any bright ideas.

It became a bedtime story

It gave children hope that maybe something was out there.

Swallowed up as a folk tale because we could not accept the difference.