My Downtown Purgatory

Welcome to my home

Composed of deeply stained stone

The stench of human suffering rising inside your nose

Grim faced ghosts stumble about on rickety frame of bones

The luminosity in their gaze long extinguished by the drench of persistent liquor

I dwell among them

The fastest moving shadow

Sirens always screaming

Omnipresent

I should be able to ignore them yet they serve as a constant scratch on the surface of hearing

All hours of the night,

freight train whistles moan their steamy agony


I often wonder why it's necessary for a beast bound on tracks to sound such relentless warnings

I picture the damaged children of this city taunting the locomotive

Standing in it's brazen path

Playing a morbid game


During the day,

exuding vapor of cigarettes is the oration of the damned

It seeks me out in haunting manner

As if it knows i am trying to ascend

So many toxic people

I should just stand here naked

Let them shred my flesh with filthy clawing hands


I extinguish this thought..


Return to the sanctuary,

within the temple of myself

Open up a fresh book for sustaining knowledge

-Silence the cries for help-