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Poem

The elevator shudders -
then a muted ping as narrow doors slide open,
the conveyance only lifts one person at a time,
               when it descends it is always empty.

I've been here before,
the stairs are always urine stained
condoms lay like squashed snails
on the cracked concrete.
It is a place for secretive degradations
a covert whereabouts
where shame wears thin its painted grin.
Nobody climbs this stairwell
it winds and ascends - a hollow intestine
          wrapped around an echoing tower.

I'm on the wrong floor,
a small sign on the bare grey wall
reads, "wrong floor."
I recall too late that there is no 'right' floor
just living-spaces cut into damp breeze blocks
Stagnant light pools in neon-lit halls,
and the still air hums with a low electric buzz.
Key in hand I search for an address
that is a denominator
                            of my personal blood type.

We came here as refugees gladly,
the city had grown remorselessly alien
but now we are exiled,
lost in this space that rises upward
beyond any high of hope,
it reaches into a darkness,
a murk we suspect is a buried basement
                               and not a rise at all.

Far, far below, on the other side
of a smeared, tightly-shut window
shadow people hide from themselves
where as usual a ‘seek and find’ rages on.
There at ground floor level
the elevator doors do not open,
                                      not for anyone.

The people of the tower are most grateful to be
sequestered inside their own hollowed-out hive
free from the streets
and the always perilous threat
                         of their own collective dreams.

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