Some are secretly asking for tragedy.
The Tate Apartments
with its hallways full of pigeon feathers
and its dead young Sylvias
searching every room for an oven that works.
Inside the surrendered company hiring office
ten year old calenders jangle
on nicotine stained walls.

Some are inviting the flames from a great distance.
The Fox Hotel
kills time within the body of its bricks,
fighting to hold a sad and jagged smile,
its coins of plaster floating in the arsenic throats of toilets.
And don't forget your own home
with "no trespassing" signs for eyes, looking
back at you through the neglected lilacs,
its poppies still winding
through the iron gates, the constellation
of a Christmas ornament
still burning in the yellow grass.