Look at that factory:
a sore upon the city-street;
a boorish decoration
that has sewn itself upon the sidewalk
like a vile, self-sufficient plant.
We were minding our own business,
spitting into cans and circle-jerking
ourselves into blindness,
when the building emerged suddenly from the nothing of the earth.
The emitted smog, risen Christ-like from the rustic chimneys,
stained our neighborhood with pollutes.
The factory asserted itself
into our lives like the play-yard bully.
It is ugly and mean,
drinking excessively and cursing all passersby,
an ill-mannered edifice.
Its eyes are the fog-stained windows
gazing at us across the block.
Its mouths the five smoke stacks
lain across the top.
One has only to look at the building
to realize it is a creature of appetites.
When we read about it in the newspaper,
I cannot say that I was surprised:
The rebel construct had raped a woman,
slitting her throat and
tossing the corpse into a dumpster.
Baton-wielding constables arrived
to arrest the monstrous architecture,
but they too were throat-cut
and tossed aside like mutant sausages.
In the end, there was nothing anyone could do
but rope off that part of the street with yellow caution tape.
The factory remains,
on our block a blemish,
still grumbling profanities and committing devilish acts.
