Poem-A-Day: Day 311

Some Things Stay With You

Writhing twisted metal, motionless
in some scrap heap heaven
breathing cold extinction to the air;
the moment one second is eternal,
when screaming steel looks to do wrong,
when glass and steel and flesh fuse
and burn away the life that was.

Hundreds pass and wonder what was,
and what caused such emotional spill;
slippage under reddening cloth concrete,
uniforms uniformly circling like lights
that simply indicate the lack of laughter,
or some scene the screeches at the squeamish,
begging for not one helping hand.