night stands up when daylight falls
and sleeps in the crude oil darkness
while combustion-engine revelers drink gasoline cocktails
and exhale smoke in pavement bars
copcar lights flash redwhiteandblue
chasing dopefiends in the city’s black lung
as heiresses in Hampton ballrooms waltz
to the requiem sirens of martini orchestras
junkmail leaves wither and rest
on broken needles in the dogshit streets
where sidewalk storefronts sag and crumble
under the depressive corpulence of slumlords
highrises malls condos for sheikhs
all the shimmering tombs of imperial glory
form the city dead but newly painted
for postcards sold to tourists on Fifth Avenue
from gleaming towers tycoons gaze down
on the landfill dreams of deadbeat citizens
swept into slums with fortunes of dust
become ratmeal to feed the ravenous city
where the youth are paroled in offices at desks
boarding redeye subways at seven o’clock
fleeing smalltown prisons with disposable dreams
to be subjugated to the tyranny of spreadsheets
here we sink and drown in the rain-thick air
of microwave radiation on bong-hit afternoons
sheltered from reality we retreat to our bubbles
and dissolve into the plots of crime thrillers
we the homegrown refugees of contagious summers
and incarcerated victims of the American night
ghosts of My Lai Moro Crater Wounded Knee
Condor Hiroshima Baghdad No Gun Ri
this land of lynchmob redscares and migrant continents
riding freighttrain beasts from the Darién Gap
to the astroturf pastures of freedom’s jailyard
where enclosed within borderwalls they graze us in herds