I am looking at ruined monuments and modern buildings,
the working face of an era.
Grounded roads of carelessness mud,
spoiled wishes of sick power.
Porcelain dolls purchased from antique merchants
were nudging, in their memory,
the past on the stairs,
one knows everything that’s smoldering the city
before it lights out
on the bridge over the past.

Sometimes at night
the sky slips on the bare shoulders,
hopes close within words,
one from each other
nerves are on fire,
the mind smothers.

People start learning,
they cling
in the changing game,
they climb the new wave
and go.