City In Dust Poem by Michael Stephens

I am older by a hundred years
Or so it seems through this veil of tears
Like my heart
Tonight the city burns
Consumed by flames:
You can smell the death in the air.
And while she sleeps alone in peace
Somewhere out there
I raise my face to the sky
And let out my banshee cry.

'Wherever now I look,
Black ruins of my life rise into view.'
Across this arid plain
Nothing remains
But the monuments of skeletal steel
And sunwashed bone.
Where the fertile cities once stood:
Now barren and full of ash and dust

Tonight the city burns,
Consumed by my lust.
While the wind whips the ashes
And our lungs fill with dust.
We choke on the embers
That blacken the sky.

The city, now
Is a barren wasteland of ash and dust.
Only ghosts walk these streets
Of decay and rust.
There’s no one there
To hear my banshee cry.
When I raise my face to the sky.

Ah!
But somewhere out there
She sleeps in peace
Never to kiss me
Or sigh my name in ecstacy.
Oblivious of the hungry flames
That have reduced this city to ash.
Just another dead citadel
Upon this desert plain.