In foursquare rooms

they’ve cordoned off

the walls

and heat oozing

from the windows

drips the skin

like watertorture

and coaxed from

the rooms by threat

of watertorture,

we enter streets

rendered warlike –

– flooded sewers

potholes

the uncaring filth –

– travesties –

streets no better

than foursquare rooms

only more open

more per-square-foot

helpless shrugs

ancient glittering

STOP signs

a WALK/DONT WALK

stagnance

peat bog glip and glop

of faultline sidewalks

mothers pushing

babies in

babycarriage

dreamscapes

and only

doctors and lawyers

care