I’ve never used this blog for poetry, but there’s a first time for everything, right? After the emotional tumult that was this past week, I found myself pulling out my computer while on the train today, writing about the things that passed by the window. Eventually what started as list of things I was seeing, became a poem about what those things made me think of. I even took some photography along the way, and the one photo I snapped sparked a name, and a theme on which to build. So without further ado, I introduce my first ever poem to be published on the internet. (nervous laughter)

OUTBOUND

A Poem With Photos by Elayna Mae Darcy (11/13/16)

Brick and street
and leaf and stone.
People moving, cars zipping,
mac trucks en masse waiting,
in steel yards full
of gravel and industry.

There’s something strange
in seeing the bones of metal giants
strewn about like skeletons,
disassembled parts of
carcass tossed aside,
just like all the
men and women
who built them.

Billboards and promises,
things bought and borrowed
that might change minds.
Extra space for things an ad reads,
but no quarter for hope.

Steaks hoagies beer and broken fences.
Leaves and trees dying by the roadside,
but still more alive than those that drive by.

STOP HERE.
DO NOT ENTER.
Hearts forbidden at this intersection.
High tech auto parts for low tech kindness.

Dilapidated homes in rows,
but none as torn and broken as those
lost in throws of their despair.

This world is a graffitied graveyard,
covered in art manifested from pain.
REBELLION in fire engine red
on the side of a crumbled wall.

Windows shattered, boards all shuttered.
Outbound, headed for oblivion.

Rock faces and tarnished places,
green and orange and yellow blurs
mingle in metal and stone,
carrying those who’ve grown,
wearing broken grins.

Further, from the city it dies.

More homes, more green,
more promises,
more dreams fulfilled
in the land filled
with recycled milk cartons
and empty honey bears
from an afternoon’s tea
by the “special” living rooms
where no one can
actually sit.

Out here,
it’s a different
kind of broken.

But still broken.

Every one of us is
outbound for oblivion…

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