GM Headquarters

Derelict Detroit Factory

more images: history *

An Abandoned Factory, Detroit (Philip Levine)

The gates are chained, the barbed-wire fencing stands,

An iron authority against the snow,

And this grey monument to common sense

Resists the weather. Fears of idle hands,

Of protest, men in league, and of the slow

Corrosion of their minds, still charge this fence.

Beyond, through broken windows one can see

Where the great presses paused between their strokes

And thus remain, in air suspended, caught

In the sure margin of eternity.

The cast-iron wheels have stopped; one counts the spokes

Which movement blurred, the struts inertia fought,

And estimates the loss of human power,

Experienced and slow, the loss of years,

The gradual decay of dignity.

Men lived within these foundries, hour by hour;

Nothing they forged outlived the rusted gears

Melba Joyce Boyd: We Want Our City Back

We want our city back

We want our streetlights on.

We want our garbage gone.

We want our children

playing on playgrounds,

but not with loaded guns.

We want to retire

by the river

and raise collard greens

in abandoned fields.

We want our ancestors

to rest in peace.

We want our city back.

We don't want law and order.

We want justice and jobs.

We don't want small business.

We mean serious business.

No more Mom and Pop wig shops.

No more Mickey D's

Rappin’ with the homies.

No more Dixie Colonel

serving Kente cloth cuisine.

No more Taco supreme.

No more indigestion

Or quick fix politics.

We want our city back.

We don't want police

harassing the homeless

for being without a lease.

We don't want video cops

busting crack heads

with flashlights at night.

We want peace keepers

to capture the real dope men

reclining in respectable privilege.

We want our taxes

to track down the real assassins.

We want our city back.

We don't want Euro-centric

or Afro-eccentric edu-macations.

We want a freedom curriculum.

We want a liberated vision

with history remembered.

We don't want our children crunched

like a computer chip

in the old world order,

worshipping slave holding

societies in Egypt or Greece.

We want the board of education

to take a lie detector test

for neglect of the intellect,

for assault an our children's senses.

We don't want them to be GM execs,

for rejects in labor camps.

We want dignity,

not cupidity.

We want our city back

We want the river dragged for distraught souls.

We want our homes rebuilt.

We want the guilty

to pay a greed tax

for the living they stole.

We want our city back.

We ain't going away

like fugitives escaping

to Canaday! Hey!

Our backs are up against the wall.

This is our clarion call!

Feed the hungry!

Clothe the ragged!

Heal the sick!

Enlighten the ignorant!

Punish the wicked!

And raise the Dead!

We want our streetlights on.

We want our garbage gone.

We want to be rid of smack and crack.

We want to retire

by the river.

We want our ancestors

to rest in peace.

We are claiming our history,

seizing the hour.

Cause, we mean to take

our city back.

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