A City Poem by Keith Dovoric

The days are long and painful
The nights are long and bare
Those alleys, hard and brutal
Between buildings built with care

Springtime held a promise
Its lilac on the wind
Summer opened its hydrants
To the many colors of kids

The sky bled with the autumn
The moon stabbed thru the eye
Before too long, it's winter --
A city waits to die

They came there by the thousands
To work in grocery stores
Left the pogroms of the Old World
For the scent of something more

But it's business as usual
It's the same thing as before
The same old anti-Semitism
The same rotten, slamming door

The sky bleeds with the autumn
The moon stabbed thru the eye
Before too long, it's winter
When a city waits to die

Here's your great-grandfather
Unlocking his fruit truck at dawn
His tree of knowledge, shaken
The apples of his eyes, gone

He'll fall prey to scavengers
They're just like all the rest
Who'd seek to exterminate his kind
Just like virus, just like pests

The sky bleeds with the autumn
The moon stabbed thru the eye
Before too long, it's winter
And a city waits to die

Hell hath no fury
Like a city's scorn
If you're on top, it raises you up
On an altar, gilt and warm

But if you're in the gutter,
That's as high as you should aim
'cause that asphalt hunter
will track you down
Just like endangered game

Yes the sky bleeds with the autumn
The moon stabbed thru the eye
Before too long, it's winter
And now a city waits to die