There's a stretch of train tracks
Outside Philadelphia
Where the trees are painted pink
The most beautiful that it gets out there
Among the graffiti
The garbage 
The tires
The broken lawn chairs as thickly spread as how I like the butter spread on toast
Among all that
All the spray paint
The plastic bags and all the rust
The trees
The dead
Scrawny trees
Are painted pink
Hot pink

Out there
There are at least thirteen pieces of litter
For every person you see
As you flash past
Safe
On the other side of the windows
Of a train

Out there
That's where the broken windows are
Glass that cries out to you over the dirt
Jagged and cracked
Menacing
And yet crying tears of chipping paint
The boarded up windows shedding their coating of color
Of any color
That isn't grey

Empty-seeming houses
Pass by
Squished together
Coated with grime
Sunken porches
Everything that brownish grey

And then you see the city
The shining
Lovely 
City
Glorious skyscrapers and people walking
Parks and lampposts
Clean
And bright
New apartments for rent
On a street near the water

What happened to the outskirts of this city?