Street Roots • January 16-22, 2015
Street Poetry
Winter Prayers
Page 13
Dead Men Don’t Bleed
by Kareem Ali
by Mr. Man
Beyond the city’s edge
The fiery seasons
Withdraw to Earth
From the distance of
Park benches
Pigeons take court
Over a kingdom of snow
They cannot hold
They soar into flight
While a few stray flakes still bloom
By nightfall
The birch bark trees have fallen
Their thorny crowns of ice grieve
Out near the skirts of blue sky
Nuns arrive
Whispering their words
Without prayers.
My thoughts...
Cold, hot, happy, sad, love, hate
Too much for me to process.
Behind the quiet weather eyes
Is a cranium buzzing like a hornets’ nest.
My left hand like an unsuspecting camper.
The wrist hopping back and forth.
The strings that move the pen,
A swarm of knowledge falling on deaf ears.
So much inside,
So much to offer,
My wallet is inferior,
By my paper and pen match the rest of the world
(Imports from China-s)
The word of a poor man are dismissed,
Anonymous thoughts echo through the sands of time.
I wonder who wrote that, they ask.
His words build a palace where thoughts dwell
As he sits on a throne of concrete.
If I can still bleed, I must be alive.
On Writing
by Michelle Parks
I think that as living beings,
Humanity has a built-in urge to create
And writing has been a way of expressing and communicating
That which we have witnessed to ourselves via senses,
Since it was invented.
I guess I figure that truth is an important aspect of the living experience
And also writing provides a method of process for the intellect to find meaning and understanding.
Having had an education and being fortunate enough to recall that on a daily basis,
I write because I am proud of myself — still.
The action of converting thought to language to symbol is,
Perhaps, not a right, but recognition.
A way of mirroring oneself and also reflecting about causality and goodness.
Logically, it is a valuable aspect of civilization and to enact my past by continuing to be insistent
in my “all-about-it-ed-ness,” is kind of rad because...
Ya’know, it helps me and it keeps the Earth going as well as creates knowledge or emotion...
It is a physical action, which is something tangible and worthwhile.
Because I said so.
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