A STROLL DOWN THE REFURBISHED CITY MARKET SQUARE

The public square

Historic edifices,
Domes and alabaster

Shining...

Like glimmering mausoleums

In a dark necropolis

Where the dead and those

Half dying

Trudge indifferently

Past used-clothes stores,

Boarded up doors, and

Cheap chinese knick knacks -

And each other -

In a headlong rush to nowhere,

Unseeing...

Some sit and babble

Nonstop

From sidewalks

In a running scream

That no one - 

Least of all themselves -

Understands

Like a human eddy

They swirl

Round glorious buildings

Civic monuments, stately domes

Where red-head parrots and dirty pigeons

Smear the lapiz azuli tiles

With their droppings

Brown wraps

Bandage blood-donor wounds

As plasma sellers totter 

Down piss-stained sidewalks

Toward the cheap chicken-leg quarters store

A second-hand metropolis

Of a second-rate state

Used to being used

And sold, 

And bartered

Down the mud-brown river