They shoot up like rockets
Howling and whooshing over the grey rubble
Of their lives
Once high enough they come hurtling down
Tugged by that inevitable trajectory
In a graceless arch

Laughing and reveling
To ward off consciousness
Of the impending end,
The slow dissent into numbness
This town casts like a curse over its nameless children

The dense swarms of them
Massing like herring
In dingy basements, under the wharf
Momentarily flashing snatches of silver
In the sunlight filtering down
Through the sloopy green gloom

They settle like silt
Over rain-rotten stoops
Over backhoes and clearcuts
Over streets of empty storefronts
Windows black like cavities

Pulled like their predecessors
Into the spiraling orbit
The gravitational drag
Of temporary enlightenment
Of uninvited dependency
Of gradual giving up

Locked into loops
Of perpetual forgetting
That where they’ve been and where they’re going
Will lead them back here
Every time