Eastern City

In the eastern city where
I won't return there is
a house that inhales its
ugliness like cancer again,
undoing the lives of those
who live inside and me once
among them, hate like a drug
they would breathe in. I'd
spend my time damned and
in a trance inside that place
where the toilets were broken
and my naked heart wrapped
up in their dark secrets.
The alcoholic with her raucous
demonic laugh, her children
like pickpockets, poisonous
air circling around me while
I slept; and like a third grader
the mentally challenged would
wear a blue star on his forehead.
Before I'd allow myself this
wasted life God pierced my
soul with his finger and I ate
it like a flower; madness
that gnawed away at me lifted
itself from my shoulder up
to its hierarchy of death.
Those I left behind lived in
their disorder, malice and deceit
their daily doses, taking orders
from their own god who watches
over them an evil, rheumy eye.