Pittsburgh (You're Back)

Style choice was not my own, but it's there.

 

Hills of Millions of Stairs

                        Steel Worker, Sport Player

                        Bored outta my mind with the whole friggin bunch;

                        Slippy, yippee, crawling

                        City without a Premise:

Because we’re here because we cannot find our way through the backways or

            sleep without a reason to stare, worry that isn’t always there.

I believed the history lessons with a second glance and I’m not

really angry with you, please forgive my awkward eyes gazing through.

I believed your cultural fathoms that could hold my tumultuous

decline into artistic self-pity, for you’re a total grunge-city.

I believed myself when I said you were clean-cut, overlooked, worn out

and undercut, yeah, something I would say, if I had something to say.

Harrisburg and Philly don’t hold a light to you, but you feverishly

smoke those dusty Menthols anyway, the lack of something meaningful to say.

You’re a good city, sitting pretty on glass, buildings hitting puberty

from the remnants of your last descent, looking awful and innocent.

Rabid with chaos, bloodshed filling up your gutters, the belly is

always full in the monster:

Indiscriminating

Illuminating

                        Inversing

                        Insulting.

            Saunter, traipse, lurch

That’s how you walk the mean streets in other cities so why not here

It’s your hometown too, do what you want, scale a bridge, paint your name

Declare the underpass as yours to keep, taxes rivet your name

Lean dexterously over the pinpoint called You Are Here

            hear the bridge collapse under you

                        Effortlessly.

Effortlessly allowing you to fall sauntering, traipsing, lurching in the air

through the loophole and onto that Greyhound taking you far from your hometown again.

            Fall down the Stairs and here’s hoping you had a good one.