Fires Poem by Mark Leci

Downtown
There are girls with short hair and short smiles
Boys with piercings and tight jeans
A man on the street corner singing High and Dry all wrong
The chords clamp down on each other, harmony suffocated
Endless questions, people giving and taking, wanting and needing
I'm not coming back

Downtown
Gives me a headache in the wrong places
Makes my left eye twitch at the corner
I'd much prefer
To be walking home at 5: 25
With two bags of groceries
Finding my own way
Staring down a sunset like a forest fire