The roads are an act of faith
The old world left
Where time was taken to cut corn
Cement empire, mitre ashlar boulevards
For this florescence of concrete rectangles, coated
beige
Like religion has faded from yellowed
walls
Low houses lost, the undergrowth
Like stenciled adverts peel, eaten by the
sweat of air.
A verdant florescence of failed Tetris
Crystalising out of poverty like an
invasion
Necessity's efficiency, three to a
scooter
While the bloated SUV sits marooned
In traffic, in rivers of screaming steel
Pheromone lines of industry swarming
A cacophony of honks and horns storm junctions
Like piston driven Wilderbeast across the
Mara, Mbalageti.
Over such self-organised acts of faith
New Collossi tower, children
of Luxor
Stronger, better fed, clad in dark
glass, bones of steel
Saturated in benzene smog like an
afterbirth of wealth
The Napoleonic dream lucid in this half
light
Tarmaced ballistics, the gyre on thin wheels
Young trees, scaffolded in the flood, a sticking plaster
For this incensed place, that boils.
The roads are an act of faith.
