The Place Where I Grew UP

The place where I come from had permanent exercise equipment:
the stairs, when the elevator didn't work (which was often).
Laden with a scent of piss that resided in the nostrils,
especially in the
summertime.
Whose lights didn't work on certain floors,
making climbing them an adventure at night.

Kids thought proper English was cursing and slang and faced 2 options -
be hard or die.

Welfare was the Great Father of all, food stamps our currency
and Stock Market.

We lived in high rises full of concrete and steel,
looking through the wire mesh to the battered playground
below reminded me of being in a cage, for only the
briefest of moments.
Built to house many in concentrated areas, the floors went up instead
of out. From a distance the windows of burnt out apartments looked
like a woman's wind-blown raven hair.

If you didn't grow up there, consider yourself lucky.
If you did, the things you saw there changed you.
This place comes back to me in dreams, I go through the gangway to the little doors
where the mail was stored. So I could take it to my Mom's place whose decor never changed. She'd go on eventually to other places, but I only dream of this one:
4444 South ______, Apt. 1305. Thirteen years of my life were spent there. You wont find it now, it no longer exists. But the glimpses are still contained therein.