Boom and bloom

Shining blue and burning brown. The sky's no limit for the masters of the financial universe in a city that never slips into low gear and chugs high above a river on whose banks stroll flowers in bright prints and predators clad in leather. Entombed within a shell of solid ground, the forgotten earth stirs in a stubborn effort to reclaim the land. The concrete cracks and stiff tiles blush with the colours of living corrosion. Seeds swell with water and burst to send tendrils of acid over stone and sidewalk. Heavy shoes and sharp blades cut these pioneering stems down to size, waging a war of attrition against their own future and the hope of life beyond a harvest of weaked modifications.