Cracks
This was written while studying at L’Institut Catholique in Paris, France on a scholarship in 1994. Fancying myself an expatriate during my short term outside the U.S. in my mid-twenties, I just had to expound on the shortcomings of my own birth-culture. It was originally written in French. I’m frankly in conflict about what I wrote. The concepts resonate so clearly for me in light of current day society, more than they did back when I wrote it. But I also believe there is a common fallacy that throughout history things are getting worse all the time while they are really getting better.
Cracks
Cracks run through these walls
like lightning in the sky
But our walls weren’t built to last
These cultural tenements, these words
were not created to endure
but to excite, incite, and die
The cracks run deep in this concrete desert
and the acid rain searches them all
for one last morsel of uncorrupted metal
some nugget of iron to rust
These billboards sell things that don’t exist
in a plastic currency
The images on this screen are ghosts
who pass, who pass, who pass — without trace
Cracks run through these faces
like rivulets of rain
But these bodies weren’t built to last
These physical tenements, these limbs
were not created to endure
but to excite, incite, and die
These people
exposed in their clothing
hide behind their nudity
These people
will die of starvation with the last bite of their meal
Cracks will run through excitement
crumbling it to boredoms
while the sun searches the desert
for some vestige of color to fade
The cracks will run like rivers
because nothing is made of marble anymore
and the incandescent suns and the gasoline rains
will search, will search the cultural plain
for one last, incorruptible
purity
— July 1994