How you hate that cliché,
the one about your neighborhood
being a war zone.
It’s a peace zone, really.
Look at those windows,
smashed beyond repair.
What’s to toss a rock at now?
No more graffiti.
Every wall is spoken for.
And the twisted shopping carts
in the brown creek.
No one’s going to steal your groceries,
not since the grocery store closed.
And there’s nothing to fear from arsonists.
So many burnt-out tenements,
they’ve long since signed-off,
taken their fluids and their flames
to better places.
The schoolhouse is abandoned
so forget all that violence in the classroom.
And every eligible victim
barely old enough to spell
is snugly underground.
Even their killers are dead.
It’s so quiet here now
you could hear a tap drip
if the water weren’t turned off
in all these streets.
And wild flowers poke up
through cracks in the asphalt.
Squirrels poke about the broken bottles.
There’s even talk of razing
all these passive, serene blocks,
for an extension to the highway.
Imagine that.
Cars speeding through
the calm, the stillness.
You can’t wait
for the first bad accident.