DIMES TO DOLLARS (to be read in a fast paced hip hop style)

Entire planets collapsing and combusting in time as inhabitants fly through the darkness we once referred to as a cosmos.

Brass bellows jazz fusion as bamboo quivers in octave squeals of passion and anger, like this cities lonely streets, tonight and every night. Junked, plunked strings wrenched and bent in tension scream long loud and sharp, bleeding in sorrow, erupting into a crescendo igniting a cacophony of life in this city, then drops with sounds sinking slowly, ever so softly beneath a sturdy smooth rhythm, ethereal in a sense but aware of those things which lurk in the night.

This is Detroit, a once was but now lost in despair wasteland. Trampled under greed and social engineering, a city where few who gave and the ones who took parted ways. Where laws preached by political thieves invested in life’s dead ends, leached upon he who struggled, taking and feeding a city of sluggards. Burned out cars, abandoned children and bodies dumped, in empty streets, dark alleys and open fields, a city rotting and abandoned.

Glass, steel, concrete, axils, engines and generations of proud workers, once noticed and revered now looked down upon, ignored, pushed back in the shadows of ruin and abandonment,
Where ceramic pipes charred black, works bent or busted and skunk scented blunts inhaled, transport youthful children of this workers proud past and hard fought respect into toxic dreams of riddled destruction, lost hope and lives with no substance, desires or future.

Big D, a King Kong from decades past, city of design and innovation, creator of Motown mastery and automotive excellence, no longer, no more, now sits a puddle wasteland unseen, unfit and unwanted even by those who once intoxicated with power and arrogance crowed at the world of their dominance, now resides in dark ashes of success no more.

Triple down, was what was heard, as bets were placed in times of glory, chances taken and fortunes made, wealth pulled from hoods where asbestos shingled factory houses lined every pot holed street and the lives of a few changed through raw perseverance and backbreaking determination, struggling, fighting and ever seeking that mythical American Dream, the Red, White and Blue of accomplishment and the discovery of personal potential deep within to expose, if lucky, if in the right place, a path where open doors and talent offered an escape.
Little by little, time after time, rules changed, lost pride glistened of mediocrity, wages now sucked up by unions who threatened destruction took treasures from those who had trusted and walked away fat.

Detroit, a boomtown Motown city, full of dreams, built on hope, spirit and substance, driven into the dirt by unions and political pimps who sucked the marrow from its bones and moved on.
A city, maybe like a country, where masses followed false hope and citizens in blindness failed to see the deception, broken promises and lies because they became truths. A place like any other place that took the obvious and turned it in to what they wished, only to discover that they too had been listening to the horns cacophony, and not waiting for the sturdy smooth rhythm to follow that those few had seen.

JJ 8.4.12