Breakfast

You leaked from the center of our city.
The broken yolk of a fried egg.
A pioneer’s breakfast made of stockyard fodder.
Oozing out, mostly from one side, then everywhere.
Downtown, Midtown, Out of town.
The trolley has no track
The streets have no name.
Tilled fields turned
Turf for perfect presumption, rolled out for consumption.
Solitude among six deliberate pines
Segregation only six lanes below
Separation from six more of the same
Like you
Just a different hue
You leaked from the center of our city
Covering me in the warmth of blacktop and blithe
A 24 hour tanning bed of parking stalls
Each one a promise of savings
Of being saved
The answer can be found in isle 4
Among the potato peelers and trash cans
Drive through window of salvation; fortify my soul as I venture to the valley of darkness
Starkness, among proliferation
Striving for sedation
Endless poppy fields of neon and glass, brick and stone
Let me count thy ways I am never alone
You bubbled from the middle of our city
The frothy milk of a soy latte
A CEO’s breakfast made of stock market fodder.
Boiling up, over the brim, spilling everywhere
Out of town, Midtown, Downtown
A 180 spin and you’re hip again
Where will I sleep tonight?
Among the condos and the can dos
Beyond the barricades
Behind the chain link lofts where the wise men made their piece
My brick house blown, sucked to the bone
Swept to a tenement trapped,
Beneath concrete and Cadillacs
Rolled by the movers and shakers
Left with my cart empty and hand out, heavy loaded and strung out
A picture past of a day gone right
The curve of a woman’s back.
Not even utilitarian.
But pedestrian
A serpentine bridge to nowhere.