Sedition seething in market square.
A boarded up bank.
A broken, battered ATM machine.
I walk the burned out street, passing the latest homeless camps.
The stained and ripped tents briefly remind me of the remnants of prayer flags flapping
earnestly in the faithless wind.
The old gods now drowned out by the numbing sounds of near-sighted construction,
car horns, alarms that alert no one and sudden, startling shouts from a patient denied medication.
Circumnavigating a foreboding stretch of former highway,
Dodging drivers who are most likely texting, keeping barely one eye on the road,
I pass the monolithic factory where wheezing trucks wait to be loaded with frozen meat.
We had to shelter in place recently when a cloud of wayward Ammonia escaped the plant to threaten
my unassuming neighborhood.
It takes a trained eye to witness any rewards of a life lived here in a discouraged part of town that tends to remain ignored.
Kevin M. Hibshman has had poems published in many journals and magazines world wide. In addition, he has edited his poetry zine, Fearless, since 1990 and is the author of sixteen chapbooks including Love Sex Death Dreams (Green Bean Press, 2000) and Incessant Shining (Alternating Current, 2011).
His current book Cease To Destroy is out now and available on Amazon from Whiskey City Press.
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