Reticent she returns to the streets
Where she once floated above
in hospital sheets 
Hands on the walls 
where small handprints still weigh 
With the burden of crimson 
indelible paints
Where are the hands 
that once fit these young prints?
What have they grabbed at 
ever since? 

Nights used to be dangerous here 
But now the mornings have exceeded 
her deepest fears 
Because that's when 
the concrete creeps in 
And perpetrates 
with more than
the greatest sins 
And weighs down 
on what used to be known
as the neighborhood 

Deliberate,
slow, 
destructive defeat 
As new corners 
consolidate 
the neiborhood streets 
Where are the ones 
she stepped with right here 
Below the bar, now a bank clad 
with anonymous steel? 
Where are the sounds 
of the childrens once heard? 
Replaced with new parking 
and yellowed-out curbs 

Now she can only
afford to return 
For a doctor, 
an in-law, 
or a day in the sun 
Some still cling, 
if the building still stands 
Some sing liberation 
from felonious hands 
But most will get lost 
in the peripheral sprawl 
Where new handprints 
signify on old concrete walls

Florescent excuses 
for liht 
Steal all the shadows 
from the nights 
from the nights 

Parody 
or progress? 
You just want to tear it down 
As you're standing 
right in the middle 
of the wrong side of town

--

Florescent excuses 
for liht 
Steal all the shadows 
from the nights 
from the nights 

Parody 
or progress? 
You just want to tear it down 
As you're standing 
right in the middle 
of the wrong side of town
of the wrong side of town