Doomed Houses

Here is the first of three found poems that I put together in July of 2011 while sitting at the bar in the Elysian Brewing Company in Seattle, Washington.  The poems came from the July 20, 2011 edition of the Seattle weekly newspaper, The Stranger.  I used to know the page numbers involved, but, alas, that information has been lost.  The Stranger proved to be a fantastic source for found poems.  I really recommend it, if you’re into that sort of thing.  And Elysian isn’t a bad place to throw back a pint or two.

Doomed Houses 

I. Bang through the wall,

    filthy and happy,

of an emptied-out,

demolished

  maze of

         bank vaults.

Thousands of

     metal doors fight -

held open, pulled closed -

  trying to show

        a freer, wilder

landscape, morphing

into a mechanical

roadside attraction.

 

II. A raven glows

            and spins

outside the house,

      burned, meticulously,

with the limbs

        of the tree,

burned with

playful patterns

visceral, violent,

     indented in the skin,

dirt and grime

                embedded

into the skin,

 a perfect deathbed partner,

 a sagging soul.

 

III. Something of a

            wakelike awareness

will make

   the coming

             demolition

    take on

       the imagery of

             economic darkness.

   Shrink-wrapped

   in plastic,

you see its dirt.

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