This place, this now, you can see it
you can see what it is too, beside
the quiet border you trace around it
this is a home town too, among other things
among everything else. I was born here,
in this empty lot, that was a hospital
in a room with one rectangular window
packed with people I would never see again,
including my mother. Cities are cruel that way
but not all together so, there is a mother here
in the rubble and the dust, and as far
as I ever got I came back to it,
I learned to love it
to love myself in it.
The west was won in a saloon
over a poker hand
and a screaming slot machine.
This place remembers even the drinks that were spilled
the out turned pockets, and moment before
the wheel stopped turning and any number
was a winner, you had to pick one was all,
and you did, because the charm was ammonia
on a weary life. There was beauty in it, and I
can remember coming home over the valley to
an oasis of light. The stars were false
but the city was true, I felt it then, a fortune
of gaudy joy, be this city, it said to me,
and I was, suddenly and always a native.
–ECW
Reblogged this on Bassem "Bear" Dahdouh [@BearUNLV].