Pentimento

A motley pentimento scratched free from its brick facade.

A history coyly chipped from a blindfold face unveiled.

I'm mortified to see what horrors have become

of my city since I last woke.

I learned a neighbor was killed some decades back,

he was my twin across the street,

While a lifeless squatter of cubist nightmare,

now stands erected in his place.

A fond repose was blindness, but in its dreams, a blessing,

Rather than suddenly see with rudely wakened eyes

what happened to what happened once,

fist ignored, then discarded, then despised.

Beneath an unblinking awning eyelid,

I watch the strange and carnival marauders,

blindly tread their aimlessly urgent course.

I seem them all, the people, wild, scowling, braying

their bombasts, taunts, and tirades ugly with lusty pomp.

What happened to their faces -- all disfigured

with ink stains and amulets, and boasting of some blasphemy?

What happened to the rosy blossoms of many a happy old,

the ones who built this temple?

What happened to the ruddy flush of playful youth,

Who shoulders inherited the mantle?

Now all usurped by decadent decay and ghastly bloated carnage,

prancing on with jaunted pride in bacchanal parade.

Who are these impish urchins, these vagabonds deformed,

so derelict of beauty, so slavish to frivolous pursuits?

Why no nobler dream than mounting their rebellion,

no grander cause than bilious destruction?

So just tear me down for I'm not wanted,

destroy me for I don't belong.

Honor me with one last gift,

the fate of my elder kin.

Reduce me all to rubble.

Raze me to the ground.

Erase all memory of

my former street.

For I can't take

the heartache,

that waking

made me

see

.