Thursday, July 16, 2009

Hazelwood and Third

Three ice cream trucks in
Under an hour
Flower beds full of weeds
Keep growing
Tears in my jeans
I'm golfing with my guitar
While the ants pick up their dead
A forty and a forty-five
Build blood-stained plans
Kick stones and dust and mulberries
Around my gaping throat silence
Peal paint chips from porch steps
With the toe of my boot
Unstrung from a hanging
Electrical wire
Cars in flight and
Birds on fire
Old men fall to dominoes
'How you doin' means 'hello'
Even passing on the phone
Stolen minutes slide by like
Turning hands and empty faces
Never cry for the blight we're making
With each dash of paint
And crash of glass
Ask for eighty-five cents
And watch the white man imagine
A syringe behind your eyes
Drip gold and
Sparkle honey upside down like
Wedding rings exchanged for
Rent
Landlords oceans away count properties in Euros
And only see the decay
If the Google car drives by again
With cameras like AKs
In the windows of 12th street Escalades
Enemies in black
In a world where black
Kids prefer white dolls
Because white is nice and
Black is bad
Even if it looks like me
The sun still shines sometimes
For rusty bicycles and pot-holed streets
Everybody sweats and bleeds
For flowers wilting in the pots and
Pot drowning out the needs
I'll keep on golfing with my guitar
Patch the rip in my jeans
The ants live in the earth
And carry their dead
We feed death our city
And pretend we haven't left
A forty and a forty-five
On white paper plans
We lick our wounds
Sleep to your commands
Our children lick their ice cream.

2 comments:

Macro Guy said...

Nicely done... this reads with rhythm closer to poetry slam or rap than your usual verse.

Joshua said...

You need to consider compiling these into a book using Lulu or some kind of self-publisher. It'd be a good way to get broader exposure of your poetry and raise some money... Just a thought.