Everything is temporary. Pickets are plywood, walls aluminum, <br />and gardens plastic. There are no nails, only screws. <br />Coffee cups and ashtrays yellow through dull afternoons. <br /> <br />Life is narrow, cramped, and long, a ceaseless wandering <br />back and forth and back: kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, bathroom, <br />kitchen, bathroom, bathroom. There is no living room. <br /> <br />The TV is a cornered god, broken, blind and gaping. <br />Afghaned couches cram corners, and wrought iron bars <br />smudged glass dim with daylight and blank at night. <br /> <br />The weather is fine as grit in dry wind. Summer showers <br />cool concrete. Storms soak beds through ceiling stains. <br />Some crush walls like empty beer cans in the fist of the wind. <br /> <br />At noon, the sun glowers over brown mountains. Patches <br />of grass make the world uneven and ankles ache. At night, <br />stars stare blankly down on unremarkable, unfamiliar faces. <br /> <br />Neighbors weary of family secrets, too close to care. <br />Everybody beats the god-damned kids. Everybody kicks <br />the dog. Nobody feeds the cat. The rooster crows <br /> <br />at the darkest hour. Nobody rises. In the hot still haze, <br />nobody dreams. The only motion is half-hearted dust <br />devils strewing crushed cups and fast-food franchise bags. <br /> <br />Everybody wishes for somewhere, someone, something <br />else. Some disappear, but nobody leaves. Tires growl <br />on gravel, pebbles ping hubcaps and greasy steel chassis. <br /> <br />What is mobile never moves. What once was mobile <br />rusts on split cinderblocks in ragged brown grass <br />near splintered picnic tables, grained gray with weather. <br /> <br />What is stationary shimmies in the spin cycle over the edge <br />of the snapped concrete slab. The mindless revolving <br />goes on. Nothing is ever fixed, and everything fades.<br /><br />Eric Paul Shaffer<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/white-trash-landscape/
