Street Roots • May 13-19, 2016
Poetry
Page 14
Reprieve
by Kareem Ali
Through this final winter evening
I see you in the distant meadow,
Engulfed in that elixir of dust into dawn.
There you hold your breath perfectly still,
Your arms crossed and strained,
Your exhausted eyes
Still splayed open to past winter heat.
From the cliff
You swim out into a quilt of trees,
Desperately holding onto the remains
Of this dying evening.
In the distance the black-eyed sunlight
Is divided into fissures of violet light
The Slow Flow
by Michone Nettles
As water moves slowly downstream,
currents push and pull with a consistent flow.
Sun’s reflection looks like glass.
Showing clouds above that resemble faces that we know,
looking at a hairless child smiling at the sky
with pure delight in the heart,
not yet knowing what the world has in store for the future.
Raindrops fall on heads with hair, that know not the hour.
Ambush in the night, if they could they would.
Only true love conquers all human nature,
the truth is all we have inside,
honesty is all we have to deal with
and can make our lives worth living.
Beyond the skirts of wetlands and shore,
Blue sparrows collapse into flight
Past the wastelands of your movements.
Brigades of priests arrive,
Just as the quicksand of memories
Subsides.
A play on love
by Avendor
Written in Seattle
by Joe M.
a glass of coffee in the morning,
a cup of wine in the evening;
i’m the happiest person alive,
at least on this planet..
renies FARMERS’MARKET
WEDNESDAYS 2-7PM
I want to sprinkle flowers upon you
and lay gemstones at your feet
I want to meet you at the fountain
in the city, so discrete
I want to mesmerize the world
by having you in my company
I want to talk all night by the fire
. on the shore, of the sea
And last of all I want
you and I to make a pact
That we’ll be with each other in heaven
after we’ve completed our final acts.