The underground levels
Of homelessness
And iridescent blue petroleum pools
Where the molecules move
In shimmers.
They have implied white gloves,
These black boys in dreads and suits
Welcoming me to my prison,
With badges and hall pass and all,
Nothing but smiles
And "good morning, sir."
It's been like that
Since the building was taken over.
The helicopters don't sweep above
As they once did,
No Matrix-mirror skyscraper warp
Fantasies any more
Or even chemset clouds,
Though the water building is still
The fountain that shoots
Its pulse into the machinery
Recycling endlessly — it makes
The strangeness keener:
How problems never really solve,
People never quite connect,
Things are never quite as they
Appear to be and it's for sure
You'll never know why
The wave rolls the way it does,
So clean and so silent
And so washed when you leave,
Ghostdried and deadnamed,
But the world outside is the hill
And just the same, gleaming fantasies
Parading as real, people pretending,
Leverage looking for its place
In relentless flow
Of uncoordinated force
Hitting the grid — so sanguine,
The intrepid architect of it all,
Could be that robin right there
Or the developer of the Bonaventure
Or the bartender of the Standard Hotel
With its child blood halls, ah
But the crows have returned to the trees,
They need no quiet
Nor an audience
To thread the net
Across the emptiness of sky
That always was
How you wove it,
The birds you see
The ones you know.
