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