If I Were a Poet

You did not ask to grow here
by this eight-lane concrete scab.
Now, your nostrils filled with tar,
you are dragged down to a poisoned earth.

I try to imagine
waking up one morning
at the bottom of the ocean,
with ribs cracking inward
like egg shells under
the wheels of trucks.

I am a hangman
with a hose that spits a long black rope.
What trial by jury can there be
when all your peers are dead?