Sometimes poetry doesn’t need words

View taken from our den this evening by my wife Jo looking across the valley

#Broken city

Tonight we are gathering at dVerse  pub for poets and basically writing poems of Twitter-length stanzas – 140 characters! Come and join us, enjoy the company and some fine poetry.

A run-down Detroit suburb

It is a war. The city
in retreat. Slashed budgets.
Not a fatal wound yet, but
cutting deep. The bloody flow
of dollars cannot be staunched.

Neither can the loss of population.
A million Detroit people gone.
Mown-down-town. This
is the entropy of an icon.
Riches to rags in 60 years.

Self-inflicted and now staggering
from a thousand cuts. Services
gone, lights out. Creditors
staring down the black hole
of a city’s finances.

It’s a full-blown retrenching.
Of everything. Planning salvation.
Yet even in decay new life rises.
Troops march in
conquering abandoned land.

This war is in deserted neighbourhoods.
Grasses, weeds, shrubs gnaw
into concrete and houses.
Rebuilding a city that
was waiting its moment.

#corruption #decay
#bankruptcy
#naturefightsback
#brokencity