Veins harden.
Arteries clog.
Concretions become varicose,
webbed across the skin,
like a long abandoned
spider’s cemetery.
Cold at its heart,
avenues that once
pumped life,
now narrow,
as the detritus
of a convalescent life
comes to pile up
along the edges.
The heart strains to beat.
No longer does the downtown core
pulse with life,
day and night.
The cells have all moved outwards
into the bulging fatty deposits
of the suburbs.
Urban waistline sprawl
stretching the transit lines
of blood and oxygen,
choking off
a once vibrant being.
The voice
that once pitched high
in song,
that fed a culture,
and gave style
to a bland nation,
now becomes a chorus
of ambulance sirens,
fire trucks,
and police cruisers
day and night.
A lamentation
spreading out to every limb.
A funeral dirge.
A death rattle.
Last breaths
and the air goes still.
Long since blackened lungs
no longer giving life.
The mind is gone.
A particularly vicious senility
that robs the present
of its past.
No amount of surgery,
or gentrification
that cure
what time and neglect
have done.
The caretakers,
long ago betrayed
the inhabitants of this body.
A faded, grey corpse
now sits on the river.
Forgotten memories
spilling out of sewage pipes
to be sluiced down
into the ocean.
All around,
fingers point
and blame is assigned,
but no one speaks a word
to the others,
whom already show
hardened skin,
and jaundiced eyes.
Even they too,
deny their sickness.
Bad cells multiply
and the corruption spreads.
Even high doses of radiation
might not cure the rot.
Who knows?
The days
of clear minds
and unobstructed veins
seem so long ago.
These bodies
of concrete and glass
will all return
to the Earth,
one day,
sooner or later.
HG – 2022
