my city. I hate it.
<< 7:49 p.m. - Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2002 >>
The Dead City

I�ve hated Michigan ever since 8th grade. So what is it that draws me to writing about it continuously? This need for black. Angry skies that haunt my dreams. Relatives so far away, I forget their faces.

There is one face I cannot forget. Cannot shut out. Grandpa looms in my memory. You just won�t understand him till you�ve seen what I have.

I hated him. Why? You ask. I�ll tell you.

He shut his mind off � stopped listening. Abided to the post World War II man�s unflinching stoicism. No emotions. Anger and passion. Left fear behind and called my dad�s girlfriend a slut. Laughs created from the tension in the air.

Detroit:
City of segregation.
White pines planted in monotonous lines.
Endless gray skies that make my insides scream.
Nothing remains of the auto capital of the US.
Only abandoned skeletons.

I don�t want to return. Just for spite.

Stories spin through my head. Grosse Point at the edge of a ghetto. Police that stop your car just because you�re driving in the �wrong part of town.� They need your ID. And ask why you�re here. �Just visiting,� my dad says.

Look at what surrounded him and you�ll know.

The highways don�t end. Miles of chopped up cement that has no beginning. No end. Stretch for an eternity. Land is flat like a pancake. Idle black trees that shed their leaves to early and wait for a white blanket.

It reminds me of the garbage dump on Sesame Street. Trash, just trash; miles and miles of it.

All the while I�m picturing life images:
Windowless shops that sell tee shirts with teams that never win.
Huge yellow streetlights that make the wires hang too low.
Grass that has never seen a lawn mower.
Rust that eats away at cars.
A bottle of Meijer�s petroleum jelly that smells like crayons.

All around, is emptiness. No one on the streets.

Death of a city.
Of a people.
They all rot there.
High-class public swimming pools with no bikes allowed.
Fish that float in the water.

Some things just won�t change; they refuse.

My grandmother still attends church services. Dressed up with her movie star sunglasses. Kneeling on hard pews. She is patient. I am not. Don�t tell me what to do with my life. I played dot to dot while the priest talked.

Too much church. Too much death. Strange incense being swung about. Painted light from stained glass windows.

How did his heart get so cold? You have to know Detroit to understand.

I asked the moon for his health. Called upon the ghostly orb for help. Regretting it later. He lay among tubes and plastic, a failure to western medicine. I was torn from his mind.

The memories of that place come in chunks. Strips of films that I choose to excerpt at will. When will it come together? Pictures taken near the back of the house, apple trees with hundreds of rotting apples. Weeds in flowerpots. Grapes that stopped growing. Was it ever alive?

Once upon a time the films played colorful images. Tilt my head back and remember. Slide down the hot sticky slide with pink shorts and neon green shirt. The girl that wore dresses and never stopped talking. It was better then. Right?

I look back there and see time standing still. The earth falling away before my feet, suddenly coming to a halt. The fa�ade has fallen. My conscious has awoke. And things that once seemed clear and simple are now dirty and tangled. Beliefs get so skewed I can�t make sense of them.

These things I want to hold onto
and desperately release.
A glass vase falling in slow motion.
Shattering and coming back together.

I wish I could forget it all, stop being plagued by memories that have no end. Infinity rests in the Great Lakes and somehow I brought a piece home with me. I cannot forget, I cannot awaken as if from a nightmare, because this is my life. I�ll continue to scratch under the ice looking for a way out.