RE: Dartbrook Rd

“It’s dark not dart
And there ain’t no brook”

…only strips adorned with trash:
broken toys and domestic bits.
Rejected charity clothes
and snapped shoes
hug the path
     like manicured gardens.
The smell is sweet
     but not the pleasant kind.

It’s been this way since I was young:
transient guests still in a refugee camp,
in their heads never free
     of the murky way.
They wait patiently
     to make long
distant calls by international card
     at the shattered booth.

Dropping their wrappings on
the muddied tobacco graveyard
with a sigh and slouch,
just like no-home
Each kitchen window booms
     a different lingo,
echoing laments of loss
     and indirection.

This dissonance blankets
the bleak asphalt
broken arrows marked
by the tribal art
of swooshing cars
and trucks that feel not