melissaahowells - This Is Your New Portland Now

tied into a tangle
of nicks and knots
bows of you broken
the brokenness tethered
to a muddy dud of a town

why don't you
throw me in the water
into the river to drown
or overboard into the ocean
yet
never-never plant me in your ground

here is inertia
here hearts drown and freeze
and are immutable

lips don't talk
talk is Babel
inscrutable

I can't remember one last meaningful word
of conversation
I'm a mouse who squeaks
my complaints a squawk
I am the inhuman animal
who lives outside

perhaps
I am not thing
I live in plain sight
but I do hide

perhaps I've no direction
no, I'm not even when blown about in the wind
nor I am not even its inconstant whine
I am in its dying phase
I am the wind's waning silence
and I am a howling thought no one heeds
and its violence

the clueless populace is
too busy texting
too busy crossing the street to the betterment side
too busy glaring glazed upon the ground

please prettier Portland
why don't you
ban me to the far off mountains
banish me to wilderness of trees
how you abhor me for my growing frailties
despise my true essence
and my essential wildness
how you daily name me your worst
as you do your best
to ignore
my existence

remove me from
your absent-minded memory
peel me from the up-graded scenery

as you grape
let me blister in the sun of your
sere-ing disapproval

remove me from my birthday's date
remove my finger prints from the inking plates of life
drill drowning holes into the soles
of my shoes
and the soul of my face

doubt we are made of the same star dust
that created the human race

but you will find me
eventually as the days pass
as the days wear on and drag you down
and you glance into your mirror
to see you too pass
and become indifference
and see how life can become
a burden and a drag

when you grow older
or less popular
or replaceable or worse
irrelevant and out of place
taking up both the right and wrong sort of space

have your little piece
your bitter taste of
your old city
without its peace

this is your new Portland
now.

LEGAL COPYRIGHT FOR THIS POEM/WORK/RANT
DIRECTLY TO THE PAGE ON FEBRUARY 27 2018
4:11PM pst/TIME/DATE STAMPED AND ALSO FOR THIS
WRITER/AUTHOR/POET MELISSA A HOWELLS

RE-EDITED 4/17/2018 2:34PM TIME/DATE STAMPED
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