Bankruptcy Court (Los Angeles, Anywhere)

The address says Figueroa
Yet the door's around the corner, on Seventh.
An additional insult, needing to ask strangers where.
We know what they want before they stop us.
They ask us wearing sweatpants and sneakers on a business street,
Their flannel shirt jacs, their canes.
Chubby grandkids are afoot as the desperate oldsters tilt their undyed hair backwards, scanning the tops of the skyscrapers, their hands a shield against the glare.
"Where", I imagine, is the last question they ask, the last words they speak all morning.
Upstairs, on a greige decor floor,
The dead air hangs heavy with ancient laws,
With Latin cognates that pre-date Crawford Texas and Herbert Hoover and Dickens;
Rules that formed those primordial seasons
When the vegetables did not thrive
When the skinny animals shivvered and fell.
My friends today will sign what they're told to sign,
Fold up the grimy xeroxed sheets into tattered manila envelopes.
When they leave 725 their hearts will beat slowly, the rhythm altered forever by the private Vesuvius that crashed down upon them, that brought them low.