Rust

Around my white vinyl house

Is scattered an assortment of mills:

Motley brick bones

With salted bloody cement cartilage

And cracked, uninhabited eyes

Staring down apathy and progress.

Pillars that once asphyxiated the sky

With black and grey

Now sigh dust into the breeze;

The dust of men and machines

Long-silent and long-still.

Poisonous paint peels off of memories

As cancerous flakes lazily snow from the ceiling.

Snake skins of creeping ruddy corrosion climb pistons

And embrace wheels.

Vines strangle arteries and musty furniture.

Trees breach the foundation

And claw open the rotted eaves,

Eager to drink the sticky August heat.

A crow grips a window-frame

    Which has long outlived its purpose

And casts a numb eye over her domain.

A breath of moisture in the air:

A nor'easter approaches.