(three deleted scenes from "the wire")

i.
if you feel no shame,
then you been sleeping at the wheel
as another raw deal unfolds
on the bumper of a classic olds,
a gpack of lickety smack
throws traffic out of whack,
as the fiends line up like chess-pawns
to get played by the game.

edgar allan poe lived here once,
when the city's telltale heart
plus a cask of amontillado
could be bought at lexington market
for the price
of a single gpack.

it's high noon for omar:
with sawed off shottie
and hidden semi-auto, terrorizing
a westside project's shadow-spots,
as seeds and grownups alike
duck for cover under benches
still embossed with reminders
that this is a city that reads.

most of all, though, it just
bleeds.  fells point fratboys
eat all of berthas mussels
and then pretend to be
national bohemians, as
acres of abandoned docks
sprout cobwebs and busted glass.
the beacon of the mcCormick factory
drizzles old bay from its ledges,
falling on freshly-shaved johns hopkins
hedges, and all the fiends
line up like chess-pawns
outside the world trade center,
hoping that, with no cash in hand,
they can finally enter.

ii.
we watch bubbles depot plod past vacants
with perfect red brick stoops,
as a lonely old bag lady stoops low
in order to dodge misplaced tourists
who turned right when
they should have gone straight,
and a corner boy who can't shoot straight
mopes outside the stash house, the one
with john water's flamboyance,
all pink trim and luminous purple spires,
and omar little plays his big tricks
on the same right people, leaving the scene
with gpacks and a new man,
it seems the corner boy who can't shoot straight
is attracted to duel-scarred outlaws
whose sinister, barely heard footsteps
could write a whole city's elegy.

iii.
stringer bell earns his mba
at towson state, while avon
misses the whole graduation,
and all the hoppers feast on lake trout
in his honor, wearing their hilfiger hoodies
like caps and gowns, and a trio
of exhausted cops holds up
the crab shacks on eastern avenue
with their bare hands,
underpaid atlases with unlisted addresses
as another western tower gets demolished
in order to starbuck some lofts,
to be inhabited by armani clones
who burrow into the city's core
like rabid prairie dogs:

"follow the drugs, and you get drugs,
follow the money, and you don't know where
the fuck it will go."