🌆 Living In A Waist Land 🏙️ Poem by James McLain

By barren sands, the weary streets do sprawl,
Where voices rattle in the iron dusk,
And hollow laughter rises, wan and thin.

The city groans beneath a leaden sky,
Where smoke and sorrow mingle, thick and gray,
A wasteland woven close with wire and sin.

We shuffle on, led by the shuffling feet,
The broken rhythm of the heartless heart,
As neon blinks and chokes with dying light.

Desire whispers in the crowded dark,
Promises drift in currents cold and stale,
And hope clings tight to shadows out of sight.

Here memory fades like water down the drain,
Filtered through grates of time and rusted hate.
The children play, the elders stare, alone,

Each captive in a glassy cage of bones.
Yet still, I trace faint roots of hidden springs,
In ruins, soft as moths, a life begins.