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Dexter Street

Greg G. Zaino

... In a defunct textile town- one mile square,
white trash, poor black, Asian, and Hispanics;
a Rhode Island welfare community, crammed into a city gone insolvent.

Hard-hitting lessons for the young- unsympathetic for the sick.
Little sanctuary to suggest- in this shit hole of Old New England.

Puked sidewalks - broken vodka bottles and colt 45 cans
defile the ancient cobbles, choke the gutters...
Dexter’s sirens scream alarm.
Whatever your wants in Central Falls, be they
bars, liquor stores, drugs, whores, or methadone clinics,
a price to be paid on every street corner.

With no other place to go, cruel existence for the homeless junkie, or boozer.
Winter is no friend here...
The old ones stay indoors- locked tight behind deadbolts and bars.
There’s good here, but kindness is a weakness, stays hidden.

Hunting, safe inside new black and whites,
Patrolling lawmen, Orwellian... watching- waiting- judging- beating- bought.
Unrestrained, with clubs and blackjacks, the CFPD pretend at
cleaning up the hood behind automatics pistols, shotguns, and M16’s,
always with back-up...

The court system a joke.
Public defenders, prison, probation, and parole- a lively business.
Simply a little street sweeping; a shuffling of the undesirables,
held under lock and key for a ghetto minute-
then back on the streets.

Leeching mothers on the dole smokin’ rock- shootin’ dope.
Children discarded to the street,
sent to the neighborhood Mission for dinner.
The pregnant teen, her untold life- just babies birthing babies

The scarred, gather at street corner...
Paper tigers cowards trying on fierce new faces,
grabbing at their dicks, debasing passing females.

Needing his wakeup - his salvation,
the yellow, soon to be corpse, of a dope sick junkie;
pathetically begging for handouts.

For him, a short trip to the finals,
aids and hepatitis- his couriers of death.
Misery, his mistress.

He scurries as quickly as infirmity allows
to his ‘get off’ place, under a highway overpass
The diseased syringe, thrown to the ground,
kicked away as the day unfolds.

Prostitutes trolling for dates.
Mascara caked eyes vying passing cars
for mere chump change.
Going down- and down again.
Their life- their world- devoid of spirit.
beatings, rape, dead...
All can be had, for the right price.
So be it- Love costs.

Behind the blue dumpster- business underway.
The cutting eye of a flesh eating whore,
sneers as our junkie quickens by- goes back to her work.

Pale skinned girlfriend leans into the old man’s Buick.
A heart and dagger, jail house tattoo on her shoulder.
Black and purple bruises covered with face paint,
as a greasy paw crawls up her red plastic skirt.

The teen hooker’s, undernourished ass is revealed.
‘Sweet Sixteen’ prays...
pleads to an unseen God,
that salvation arrive soon.

See the watchful eye of her taskmaster- her pimp,
as he reclines in his pearl white Lexus,
dazzling the ghetto with glittery chains and gold capped fangs.

He operates for the short end... The end that holds pale teen hostage,
captive for the ‘bomb’ shot of dope that keeps her hustling

Three gunshots fired; Close...

The lifeless heap of man shot twice in the face.
Stuffed in his mouth- a plastic Ziploc of crack rock.
A widening black pool, eddies over the curb
the corpse pisses itself.
The rivulet race’s for the sewer
that dumps into to the Blackstone River.
So be it...

Another statistic for the state coroner.
Far off, the sickening siren- rescue on the run, but too late.
The death wagon always too late on Dexter St.
Impatient cops, asking the standard questions- getting nowhere.
No one talks- all are blind- unflinching.

A mass psychosis...
The raw component for suicide.

Evil and practiced- gentle and naive
brave and young, feeble and bent,
Where to run- to hide, to make a stand?
A bankrupt city’s deadly pause...

The crashing fall of so many.

Dexter welcomes newcomers, one and all
as Central falls consumes itself-
pukes its decayed contents into the river.

The ancient Gods watching, patiently waiting...
Waiting for the cancerous malady,
to finish
“Its Thing...”

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