Ode to Pittsburgh

I think Pittsburgh is beautiful.

I see in it a visualization of the struggle

of man versus nature and nature versus man

the urban decay at odds with

a more natural entropy

The steel and concrete

rusting and crumbling in the grips of a natural world

that wants to take it back.

In the little nooks and valleys

the abandoned children of industrialization sit

the aged metal as red now as the bricks

of the homes that once housed their blood

and now house the ferocity of LIFE

once abandoned, thriving

under even the least hospitable eaves.

I would say that this is a morbid love song.

but instead of the talk of death in life

and life in death

between two lovers as emotionally entwined

as the rust and root of this city

as the living things flourish unexpectedly

in the ruins of our pasts.

In the crevasses are hidden awaY

the skeletons of our (industrial) revolutions

safely out of mind of the eye of progress.

The victorian edwardian Industr-ian fingers

twisting through the trees that were once shaved

bald from the hills,

when the dirty coal chimnies smoked and raked the sky.

Traces of the old liveliness-

The culture and BREATH of our ancestors-

in the crawling brickwork and tiling

and the decaying steps

that once guided our fathers weary feet back home.

Our shared history, sometimes ignored or forgotten

by the very life that thrives

in it's place.

Maybe you need a special appreciation

for decay- but also an equal passion

for life- to hear the adoration in my voice.

For in every begining

every striving and thriving

there is the traces of our endings

of the sweat and tears

and blood shed on the tracks

of our ever onward progression.

And in every building overtaken

by weeds and youths

the windows shattered or the bricks decayed

is the stimulous for growth

in the same forces we decry today

as destruction, but

will laud tomorrow as our salvation.

When I fell in love with Pittsburgh

it wasn't for the shining lights

or the memories of being held there

so joyous I dared not breathe-

It was that in every corner

I could not help but see

LIFE and DETERMINATION

arriving from under our cracks.