The Midtown Creep (Whole foods and crepes)

The Midtown creep,
Detroit -
After someone spilled bleach.
All the dapper gentlemen,
That pour from the portal
Down by Wayne State;
A time rift to the eighties.
With all their neon v-necks
And stone washed jeans.
Painting black and white
Lines in the street.
"We'll" take back the city
Whether we mean to or not.
Midtown grows, block by block
Whole Foods and crepes,
College kids in costumes and capes;
This is not the city I love.
We came for the communities,
The renaissance and opportunities.
Well, those cass corridor bonfires
Where we found our continuity -
Made plans and plots in the silence
Between the pops of gun shots
Have become Haute parties for
All the kids on Safari from Royal Oak.
Hey, now all my neighbors
Look just like me - in skinny jeans.
I'm sorry, we were naive.
Young idealists who'd believed
The city had escaped it's past;
The day someone said nigger
To me on Woodward I knew;
Every step we take forward,
We're taking two steps back.

I Said, I Thought (Or something in-between

I was never free,
I said, I thought,
Or something in-between. 
As I watched his dignity
Slither down his brow
And his cheek, his knees,
To lie puddled about his feet.
Outside Sala Thai, smoking,
I saw him stroke her hair;
She was delicate, pretty,
Like a stone nymph carved
Into some pagan cliff -
Gorgeous and "just kind of there".

Here we have a man in love,
Pulled into his nicest pants,
Sears dress shirt clinging
With June sweat to his back.
His eyes pleading, to her,
Or to pride; screaming
And on the verge of tears,
Here we have a man in love -
Facing his greatest fear.

Bonfires, I thought,
Between puffs and breaths;
We light them, I think,
Without thought to fuel
And their eventual death.
So caught up in the flames,
The primordial dance,
We build not homes, but
Tinder ringed by rocks.

Here we have a man undone.
Pitiful in his tears, naked for me
To see. If I was a better man
I'd turn my head, but I'm not -
And neither is she, like the oceans
breach, both simple and shallow
I can see the disgust in her pity -
But also like the oceans,
Unfathomable and deep;
There's something in her hips,
Their tilt and cut I can see,
But like an illiterate with words -
I just can't read.
I said, or I thought,
Or something in-between,
I was never free.