water

Damn this mean old city as she burbles slowly down
between the wet cobblestones and cracked bricks
until hope is bent, folded and washed away.

Every fucking dollar is a dying fish,
every fucking cent a swallowed worm
smokestacks so immense they seem like rods
poking up from the river to God's fat blind eyes

they remind me how we've begged and borrowed, died
and lived on a four meter drop from the hell above
to the hell between us and him. how we've gambled

and strived for power and faith, here between floods
with no raft and no sure shore to rest dry from our trouble
and the thunder of the way we fall and fall again.