Hello and welcome to Cook and Crank, the Cosmic Poetry Podcast. I'm your host, Simon Pole, the Cosmic Poet. Do all cities run down into dust and chaos? This is what we are exploring in today's verses called Chaos Delivered. Perhaps such a state is just their natural condition? What is the poet to do then? Be a witness, escape, escape and come back with a helpful set of hands and a broom? If there is an answer to this eternal question, we will try to find it out after the break. Chaos delivered Pigeons scatter at my feet, watchmen of the midday street, sunlight slanted, shadows yawn, out from under three balls pond. At a bench there sat some lumps, perhaps people, perhaps bumps, guano crusted, long to freeze in a waft of sewer breeze. Over windows empty stairs, rost, rost plywood squares, on them painted dripping spray, words to greet this squalid day. Garbage in and garbage out, a pox on you and the gout, a kindly phrase spreading cheer on the inmates massing near. In the used appliant shop, never do they fear the cop, only he in narrow suit, stick pin tie, cufflinks of loot and gold coin, he the books inspects close after the cooks, have them basted and them baked, and them with gross frosting flaked. I the dust in my spent shoe, where it buckles without glue at the toe, I tip and spill at the tarnished window sill, in this building, ghostly sea, homeland of a century, or more that's past, let it die, let them from their manor fly. Pine I for the lemon sweet, candies colored will I eat, in wrong alleys, rancid stacked, with the wreck of lives unpacked, those who have inverted gone, like a proud majestic swan, who a crow became instead, on themselves they bloody fed. Wreck of heaven, wreck here dumped, on them water must be pumped, water of a cleansing kind, I am not the one to find its soapy spring, only me to announce the sophistry next here, so let us do what the conscience wants us to Water, water wet or dry, little either do I spy on these streets, without within, on the skull a parched grin is the greeting one must get, though with sweets you parade yet, none will eat and only groan, give me but the gristled bone. Sweet, sweet sweets, the candy good, import little understood of its method, makes me feel like a king who would wealth steal from this town of ghastly ghouls, or its wanton itchy fools, themselves scratching like the hen who pecks before Tiger's den. So will I this horror leave, and its demise little grieve, though I know it plumes me not with those glories ill begot, on them who preach city care without ever living there, like I did, O let them howl, let the bastards forward prowl. Other places not yet sunk with that jetting global junk, like the plastic in the sea, ever swirling, choking thee, go get out, maintain a zone where we can survival hone, one day to them reapproach, and their ruined precincts broach. You have just heard Chaos Delivered from the poetry collection Poems for Ocean. I'm your cosmic poet and host, Simon Pohl. Visit the website Simonpol.ca for more cosmic poetry, including the book we've just read from. We'll be back soon on the Cook and Crank Podcast with more readings from the Poems for Ocean Collection. Until then, remember, poetry is the water of life, though whiskey might be too. Goodbye.