Hello old limestone sculpture,
Of an ancient, armored,
Sword-toting,
Roman soldier-
Meet acid rain.
Your chiseled face,
Buffed away,
Until the once completed visage,
Looks like modeling clay.
Slowly, but surely, we return to square one,
That marvelous, marble base,
Laid bare,
Then swiss-cheesed,
By sizzle drizzle.
Behold the disappearing monument,
Matter cannot be created,
Nor destroyed,
But that’s neither here nor there,
Until we put real effort toward conservation,
Of the curated.
Shannon and I
took a wrong turn
off the middle-path,
and found ourselves
outside our comfort zone.
The sign said,
“Welcome to the City of Hyperbole,
Population 400+,”
At our side were so many traffic cones,
workers were expanding the road
from one lane to four.
When Shannon asked,
They told her “tourists keep rubbernecking to read the plaques.”
Every house displayed their own personal braggadocio,
The things about themselves they wanted everyone to know,
The first one on the right,
Had a sign out front that read,
“The world’s humblest home, made of the finest red brick,”
It seemed cozy enough.
The one across the way said,
“A lawn to rival Elysium,”
It was obsessively manicured,
but no more so than the others for sure.
We came upon the town square,
Sky scrapers, fountains and memorials,
Commemorating the founders,
The newspapers were filled with highly-biased editorials.
“This place is creepy,”
Shannon said under her breath,
The bystanders sitting on benches, walking by and paying no mind
In short order, went from sleepy,
To irate.
We were maligned,
And chased,
One woman shouted “watch what you say,”
A man with turtle-shell sunglasses screamed, “that’s the ugliest car I’ve ever seen,”
“This town is the only place I’ve ever found peace,”
“City, you mean,” one pedant corrected the other.
The amorphous crowd,
Destroyed itself,
Piece by piece,
Brother by brother,
While we made a quick get away.
I’ve built you up quite a bit,
And I’m finding it harder and harder,
To leave than ever before.
If I could see in here,
I’d find unwound wires,
That cross-cross the cracks,
In the concrete,
And trickles of tap water,
That run down your façade.
But being off-the-grid,
Has it’s own advantages-
If walls could talk,
They’d tell you that,
We reach high here,
In spite of what we’re missing.
No sunrise goes unseen,
People stand on their balconies,
With nothing,
And also everything they need.
The File Pile 