ATLANTA
The snake winds its way through the gray belly of this stony beast
excreting poison from every seventy-mile-per-hour scale
twisting and turning until it appears
it appears as if the snake is eating it's own tail
the snake is going everywhere the snake is going nowhere
this snake won't make it to the ancient lake
no matter, the lake is dry, the bed packed with dioxins
and lined with silt filled beer cans
the river re-routed around it to make room
for the snake impaled on a hundred hundred concrete staves
slowly baking in the sun until the boiled juices sink
into the deep soil
the deep stain in the land that must be scraped and scoured clean
before anything can be done, scraped and scoured clean
out damned spot
before the snake chokes on the fumes
the steely scales gridlocked
the snake unable to digest even itself
as it festers under the unblinking eye
of the unrelenting southern sun
on this endless plain called Atlanta, this city that never weeps
for it's burned out past and traditional shame
it's lost opportunities left lined up and knocking madly at the door
of this failed commercial circus trying to Be Some Place
filled with people trying to Be Some Place
caught in this endless tourniquet
this engineered pre-cast concrete carcass
staring at the endlessly sun-blinded horizon
with the dim eyes of a death thrall
the air full of exhaust fumes and chatter
and misery the sun never sets on
Atlanta, core and shell, Atlanta, rusted through
Atlanta, next winner
eight million to one, oh,
now that I hear it, the rattle that comes
to this place perpetually on the edges of death
Atlanta, constricted, paralyzed, drunk
Atlanta, stagnating, returning to swamp
Atlanta, unbreathing, beginning to rot,
Atlanta, Atlanta, godammit, Atlanta
I'm gone.