Washingtown Trash Trucks

Ages pass by the bourgeois
clutter we scorned and bought.

Trash trucks grovel in the alleys
grumbling on their knees before
garbage bins, lifting them up,
swallowing them whole.

Engines roar through night
around ancient buildings
beside modern streets
steel highrise office
writing the doom of city
in these clashing metal guts.

I hear them from rooms
in the empty townhouse
where I crouch this
night monsters roar
only a moment more
they will smash down
the walls around me and
take me away to the burning
city dump outside of hell....

In an agony of newspaper
death, capital trucks eat up
the fate of southeast Asia
seasoned with the honor of
my brothers and sisters bloody
smoke hung in my nose until
I think the devil smells
some other world to
crush a new and sweeter
fragrance, another fruit
to pluck and grind.

But no. I was spared.

This was only poet passing
wind on paper while fish
swam downstream under
bridges of Potomac
poisoned news.