an
overgrown tree-fort—a designer play-house for the aged,
rising
by leaps and bounds on yonder green road sign ground,
banging
away in construction with the grind of steel and
rippling
the muddy pools in the playgrounds at its feet.
In
the evening they strung us up with the lit lights in its frame—
the
ad’s glow beckoning the second coming of Rome
reproduced
to the fullest of a fry pit where the grease is soon to spit
and
the oven's soon to burn to blaze away the sling from the rock,
to
let Goliath Caterpillar build ‘til all the earth is sewn.
And
so we loved to go down there just to watch them work
and
see those big machines growl and rumble through the dirt—
ripping
the ground and blasting the rock with dynamite charges
as
hardhats poured in the asphalt mix so we could dream of being
builders
too as if the world were made of Lego bricks.
We
watched the steel and glass get born down in that place
and
its face get bolted to the rock with its basement cracks.
And
yet under that girth—breaking below the belt, print and paint,
our
paper-mâché homes were left ablaze only to be washed
away
in its tide to where no one had to face them.
In
Providence we saw those iron sky webs fasten ‘round
the
overpasses and stone up the escape routes on the exits—
they
tied up the bridge when we were broken down and stranded
all
excited by the boats below the rebar wherever one landed,
one
eye blinded by the scorch of neon over a dump.
And
out past the blocks we'd see the Big Blue Bug upon his roof
right
where he’d give us a kick so sick with his six legs
and
bulbous eyes, antennae, and wings groping off the side
of
the pest building down town (quite a sight from the ground!),
yet
everyone around came to love him like their own.
So
beyond all the lines and guardrails on our highway crib
the
possession of my eye was first to dark and then to light
and
began with that billboard insect with her forked tongue
off
the cloverleaf already bulging to the brink, a slow pass by,
her
"fuck me" eyes gone butting in on backyards.
There
my eyes held out ‘til they splattered on the windshield
for
her wings and furry legs—so alien to this boy, a savage feeling,
her
antennae groping my spine to send me reeling while
choking
and sputtering through a roadway of gas fumes—
her
lashes as separated from me as her blooms.
We
grew up gorged on these remains—the curves and shapes
and
scapes all scooped and scraped from sex to form,
but
from dust to dust my digested spoils a fertilizer still bore,
whether
sour or sweet, sickened in old age or exuded by youth,
there
was always truth in “Beauty and the Eyesore.”
--Poems from the Sprawl
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