Damager Poems | Examples

Where the Guns Go Off

There is no envy 
of where we live: 

rundown apartment complexes, 
dangerous housing projects. 
Poorly zoned business districts 
whose warehouses cut through our landscape 
like the tombstone's of giants, 
sitting tagged and vacant 
from a boom that never happened.

We are a single community 
divided amongst ourselves; 
a dozen or so quarter mile barrios. 

Each fiercely guarded 
by angry, misguided youth. 
They bleed to protect something 
that’s worth absolutely nothing 
for reasons hardly above reproach.  

This is the land of concrete and graffiti; 
broken knuckles and broken hearts; 
the place where flashes of light 
break the night and sometimes, 
we die. 

This is the crazy west side, 
the youth wrecker, 
the damager of all who dwell. 
This is home, where the guns go off.