Concrete

Reticent she returns to the streets
Where she once floated above in hospital sheets
Hands on the walls where small handprints still weigh
With the burden of crimson indelible paints
Where are the hands that once fit these young prints?
What have they grabbed at ever since?

Nights used to be dangerous here
But now the mornings have exceeded her deepest fears Because that's when the concrete creeps in
And perpetrates with more than the greatest sins
And weighs down on what used to be known as the neighborhood

Deliberate, slow, destructive defeat
As new corners consolidate the neiborhood streets
Where are the ones she stepped with right here
Below the bar, now a bank clad with anonymous steel?
Where are the sounds of the childrens once heard?
Replaced with new parking and yellowed-out curbs
Now she can only afford to return
For a doctor, an in-law, or a day in the sun Some still cling, if the building still stands
Some sing liberation from felonious hands
But most will get lost in the peripheral sprawl Where new handprints signify on old concrete walls
Florescent excuses for liht
Steal all the shadows from the nights
Parody or progress?
You just want to tear it down
As you're standing right in the middle of the wrong side of town