There is a beauty to this city
Seen through glasses made of plastic
from the bottom shelf of each corner liquor store,
in which you can see the community in the littered streets and vacant states of others
who don't know where or if they'll even be
in a few years time.
Years are too long.
As are the days,
as are the hours,
as every minute drips down
from the dilapidated gutters
of the coarse, once sanguine,
stream.