Reflections On A Condemned Boarding House Poem by Matt Greenblatt

Down on their luck
They decided to take rooms in that house
Sheltered by the crumbling walls
Of the lampless corridors
They made a home
And the house took rooms in them
Decency eroded to decay
As people became boarders
Honest women were pregnant
With the peeling wallpaper's daughter
And good men suddenly found themselves
To be smoke-clouded studios
Choked with the scent of alcohol
Where matches burned
And blood stained the bare floor
Each one a grain in the still-standing corner stone