Urban Vigil

Haze of a forest under siege. Mine shafts stand on their heads for the pretty passersby whose thoughts are effluvia or echoes in the key of metalla. The ambitious of every continent try their luck. Roaring great beast in the flashing lights. A stranger lies dead or alive in a doorway. That click you hear is the phonic trace of the autobiographical: I was there like another. The moon hangs like a surveillance camera beside the tower. One sees the tower in photographs. Mist turns the scene clown-romantic. Irritation at the least stimulus at the end of a long day. Broken glass on the staircase, murderous lyrics scrawled on concrete stinking of piss. Inevitable or habitual, like translation, please. All the flesh is younger and frail in the imagination that is left to us, a poor thing, stuffed with merchandise. "The merchant dies," and so saying the robber did not put down the knife. Apprehension has its own special effects when sight is confused by the dancing air above the long-buried stream. The white man stands by the white gate; he smiles in natural response to n'importe quoi because the birds have gone from the trees that have gone. The roadways emit signals of pleasure to those who sit on the porches to be lulled by waves rolling in.

Caliber and rate of fire interrupt the song again. Half-hidden by the cooling ashes, a brand-name product survives. Wind does not erase the financial canyon, and this sought-after page-turner is a triumphal arch, you shit. No one is there to remark the rattle of blinds so that you can take a bow and play dead.


James Brook | Mudlark No. 18
Tune of Wreckage | Heroes of Labor