Streets

The new streets aren’t like

the mean streets or the gold streets

or even the neighborhood streets,

they are just streets where a variety

of interconnected things just seem to happen.

Streets of coincidence and timing,

streets of random dumb luck and

a convalescence of circumstance

all conspiring to put that mish-mash

into some sort of coherent form.

The streets speak gibberish,

their word is unreliable and

sloppy and full of the worst

sorts of half-truths and half-lies,

the street’s word has been run over.

The Dead End is a cul-de-sac now,

The No Outlet is filled with new houses,

the worn Earthen path has given way to

the Urban Street Garden Club and their

rose bushes and lilacs.

The liquor store is a tax accountant office,

the train tracks are cut off,

the Church is empty,

the diner is boarded,

but the flower shop is ok.

The corner store is a franchisee,

the tire shop is gone,

the video store is shuttered,

the movie house burnt down.

The cat lady house is empty.

Her corner is now empty on hot summer

nights, once men came creeping

with their hot summer desires and greasy

money. She’s been gone a long time. She’s

probably dead, from either all that between the legs

or all that nothing in her head.

The street might have known, if it had

the chance, to tell us what it had heard,

but those days are gone and summers and

winters make us pretend it never had anything

to say in the first place. Those street are gone.