Old Fourth Ward: The Cost of Renewal

Lyrics

The morning alarm is a circular saw now.
Used to be birds on the wire.
Used to be a screen door slapping shut down the block.
Funny what you call progress.

There’s a hand-painted ghost on a brick wall, just off Irwin Street.
Selling a Coca-Cola nobody here can recall.
The corner store’s gone. It’s a curated market.
Where a gallon of milk is priced like a secret.
They tore down the duplex where Mrs. Green used to live.
Put up glass boxes with nothing to give but a view of the next glass box.
And they call the new color ‘greige’.

They call it renewal. They call it a bloom.
But for every new window, they shuttered a room.
They paved over the tracks and they planted new trees.
But the roots of this place are a forgotten disease.
The cost of the future is paid with the past.
A foundation of ghosts, built too fast.

Two thousand and twelve, they cut the green ribbon.
The smell of new asphalt, a promise was given.
Joggers in bright colors, a beautiful parade.
Smiling for cameras, a new memory made.
I saw chalk drawings of houses on the path below.
Sketched by the children of people we don't know.
Not anymore.
They sketched front porches that aren't there anymore.

They call it renewal. They call it a bloom.
But for every new window, they shuttered a room.
They paved over the tracks and they planted new trees.
But the roots of this place are a forgotten disease.
The cost of the future is paid with the past.
A foundation of ghosts, built too fast.

So tell me, you architects of this new age,
With your blueprints and your clean, empty page.
Did you leave a footnote for the names you erased?
For the tax hikes, for the hurry, for the haste?
For the moving vans that came in the night?
For a culture bleached out in the bright, new light?
Where did they go?
Does your ledger even know?

The morning alarm is a circular saw.
And the boutique coffee shop sells a five-dollar law.
The law of the market. The law of the new.
And it sings its one song…
…but not for you.