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Flint Within its brilliance gleaming Cool black in lacquered polished silver chrome Cranked up pistons bleached in summer’s heat Hot steam rising as gears thundering Beyond the crystal liquid city lights Highways built across the land In hearts felt pride American dreams made real Within its prime Men in factories perfect their craft Spit shined bright colored Red white and blue Wing tipped Chevy’s roll off In the thousands Sleek stream lined stamped Made in the USA Glistening in its iron steel Pushed to the edge of the sea Across the world they roamed Hot off the presses Home grown trade Costumed culture of its day Motown rhythm’s rock and roll Hot rods slow driven mags skid marked dragsters screech down tar tracks left beyond the deserts of the unreal made real within its memories On the waterfronts crooners propagate music of the soul through the dark lit shadows within the wisdom of the streets to the people left stranded beyond the hopes of change Withered hands that work no more glazed over eyes stare down as Plumes of smog roll by their post industrialized worlds lightness lost to those without a trace escaped by those that fled its coming end the void of history left in its wake despair in visions of what’s to come Chemical wastelands left aside Its rivers still run but filled with sludge From the faucets to those so young Language fails to fill the silence Within its rage no words left to describe so divorced from reason we turn our backs to those who are our own Alienated distractions Signs of our times Unwilling to wake from our dreaming sleep afraid of a truth and responsibility it congers we escape in denial of our own despair Back to the river we go Carcinogens within its midst Red rusted exposed in bending steel To the river’s edge where mouths Are quenched again Waters dry as summer’s day Turn to dust upon their wanted lips Corrupted cities that dwell in lies Flint Michigan Where they give pristine water To corporations for free To sell for profit fees And toxic water for the people This is how their money is made Barren waste the waters run Syphilis sewer stench while Cities thirst Neglected voices how will they rise their brains are all but dead Opiated by the poppies Made them sleep Turn on your faucets now Brown rusted lead filled Dry throats thirst And told its fine Back room deals Behind closed doors Decisions made A race to the bottom within the Bottom line Reap the profits from our blood That’s squeezed from every stone Back to the river we go Waters diverted in the dark night of day Without people knowing What’s the price they pay Vended contracted monopolies Sell the bottles while people are poisoned And are taxed just the same Flint is an analogy of who we are today A smoldering kindle where flames are born To rise again some day There is now no escape Nowhere to run We must face and decide Just the same From its surplus to its debts From production to its destruction The wars come home at last Lost within the flux of time Its own abstractions hollowed within the sun that shines no more the stainless steel gears glisten Recoil now in bending grace steel dusted rust in cogs of wheels stop to a screeching halt Dreams of past animate a thousand automations coming behind in the barrenness of its bleakness grey lots grey beyond its greyness blank faceless faces distilled from city lights back to the river we go putrid scents rise oozing from Deserted fields the Flint River comes pouring through Its city walls to all that’s living there Senate stalling’s congressional delays Blind indifference to their constituents Cloak themselves within The vulgar stench of city halls Within mathematic calmness Of controlled calculations Representatives of the people so they say Parasite’s for their own special interests Rape what’s left to fill their pockets Within the framing games they play Hidden crimes of inhumanity Charismatic smiles within their Smirking grins Criminal thugs in pin stripe suits Behind the legitimacy of state authority Leaders of our dying land Reap their benefits from greasy palms When exposed their fingers pointing To all but where the cause is faulted Back to the river we must go Tenement houses cramped till bursting Faceless children widowed moms Toxic water from their faucets Rancid refuge from their cities That tumble like dominoes Of falling sticks upon our deafening ears Back to the river we must go Within the garbage of destruction Twisted terror within twisted words Bureaucratic mobsters behind the bench And those who run their state Through corridors of labyrinths Deceptive orchestrations of their own Orwellian language That comes alive again Drumming drumbeats submerged beneath our eyes Indifferent to their crimes Stagnated lessons above their laws Boardrooms filled with worms Which bleed the wire bare In uncertain certainty of our times Perched beyond the common lines Of bitter lands and their scents Or from the consequences of their demise Images fade the eagle becomes the vulture Talloned claws reach across the skies Ravaged dripping in blood of earth and man privatized justice that has its price Quid pro quo is its prize decomposition within its construction when masks come off at last witness of our times reset the kindles of its flames the light restored within the anger forged we find the roots that’s been scorched to find the cancer of its rot to cut it out and make it whole to what is there to see decaying order of the day from the factories of our past back to the river we shall go abandoned dogs in the call of their wild howl in distant pastures waste still spills at the river’s edge drain pipe sludge in purple hues fish lie belly up on their sides oiled sanded shores amidst the blackened stones winged migrations pass it by and children fish no more the sun still rises there crimson skies that leave unnamed voices find their voice amidst the nameless names in silences hiding within their risings darkened rooms are lit again descent from memories within when delusions abandoned shadows awaken initiation within these spaces now written unwritten objectives toward life’s creations are born again once more
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