The World Ends in Miami
Caroline Pranckevicius
Miami is the city where the world ends.
It bakes and basks in loneliness;
Miami is the city where the world ends.
Here, the clouds glower while holding in tall water towers,
yet the children float highest in the afternoon showers.
Old women hold hands with older men,
thinking of the palms they hadn't met.
Disappointment runs high in the city of sunshine.
Parties crash and children die;
the death of innocence is the darkest kind.
Perhaps the sun doesn't shine a light,
as much as it blinds our sight.
A heavy fog of perfumed moms,
holding everyone, but themselves, accountable
for their biggest flaws.
Beaches with cigarette sand,
and oceans of stranded SUVs
holding heated waterfalls
of half-assed profanity,
and high-tide consequences.
The high-heads of the pseudo-religious
with crosses stuffed in their back pockets,
tend to forget about the sneak thieves
that call our city their company,
but it doesn't matter much;
those religious types only
ever seem to lose Jesus.
A city of givers, with grabby hands,
suffering under the only season
we seem to have.
Miami is the city where the world ends.
For every flower,
there is a note left
by a one-night guest.
For every gentle kiss,
someone else's
black and blue punishment.
For every morning sun,
there's a more familiar
sense of mourning.
Because the boys that live, lie,
and the men that never kill, always die.
So, if the world ends here,
with its sun-kissed children,
beating hearts with words,
like stones and sticks.
If the world ends here,
we're hiding behind years of conflict
and minutes of revolution,
standing out with sore minds,
exhausted by the years of running
around these mental blocks
we got up.
So when the world ends in Miami,
apologize to the heroes,
that worked so hard to protect it,
and kiss their enemies,
that only lived to speed up its demolition.
We were one pair of lips,
spelling out four hundred thousand stories.
Miami goes out like it came in,
with a blaze of glory.