concrete

Reticent she returns to the streets

Where she once floated above in hospital sheets

Hands on the walls where small handprints still weigh

With the burden of crimson indelible paints

Where are the hands that once fit these young prints?

What have they grabbed at ever since?

Nights used to be dangerous here

But now the mornings have exceeded her deepest fears Because that's when the concrete creeps in

And perpetrates with more than the greatest sins

And weighs down on what used to be known as the neighborhood

Deliberate, slow, destructive defeat

As new corners consolidate the neiborhood streets

Where are the ones she stepped with right here

Below the bar, now a bank clad with anonymous steel?

Where are the sounds of the childrens once heard?

Replaced with new parking and yellowed-out curbs

Now she can only afford to return

For a doctor, an in-law, or a day in the sun Some still cling, if the building still stands

Some sing liberation from felonious hands

But most will get lost in the peripheral sprawl Where new handprints signify on old concrete walls

Florescent excuses for liht

Steal all the shadows from the nights

Parody or progress?

You just want to tear it down

As you're standing right in the middle of the wrong side of town