Daily violence left a stain on the cement, also, thousands of times, both before and after this Age of Terror. Perhaps the police got to the scene first and let the bodies to lie there, on the pavement where they had landed, for hours and hours while they analyzed. . . stroked the soft skin with chemicals to recapture the past.  Or maybe they don’t care enough, and that was that.  And then, who cleans up the mess?  I’ve never seen that picture before, the man with a mop, with bleach, rubber gloves, scrubbing away the stain.  Or perhaps the rain does it.

 

 

 

This will change its face

Perhaps the police stained the asphalt, stained the asphalt with real black blood.

I saw it one night, I saw him, hog-tied face down in the middle of the intersection.  Shame.  I turned my back.  I saw his head held down, his tongue lick the wet asphalt. I turned my back. I consented on behalf of all of us who remain, for the time being, unhandcuffed.

Shame: that I could not face my shame; shame, I turned my back.

 

 

and happen again soon.

The world is constantly on fire, eaten by lusty decay.

 

To stain earth would be easier to clean; scuffle around for a few days, let the dust return to dust. But asphalt relies only on storm drains, which are the mouths of the sewers, which subsume themselves, and cigarette butts too. Also, all that is immortal in food consumed.