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The Eclectic Pen - Silent Screams


By: Alan (arkrebel) -   + 24 more  
Date Submitted: 1/28/2007
Genre: Literature & Fiction » Poetry
Words: 384
Rating:


  The streets are loud with silent screams
Beneath the moonless night.
They glisten with a million tears
Below the cold street lights.

We quickly find our way back home
Escaping to our dreams.
And leave the streets abandoned
To the reapers of our schemes.

We find our welcome comfort
In the warmth of walls we build
To shelter us from all our fears,
A brick and mortar shield.

Surrounded by our peace of mind,
We lock ourselves inside.
And live our soft realities
We worked so hard to find.

But just outside the boundary
Of our ivory tower life,
A serpent from the garden
Pulls a long and jagged knife.

He holds it close against the throat
Of a child who went astray,
And wandered from the shelter
To become a runaway.

His blood flows swift and sure
To form a puddle at his feet,
And then he dies a lonely death
A victim of the street.

A block away a mother screams
In pain of giving birth,
She knows she’ll never finish school
Or find her sense of worth.

Her baby cries in protest of
The life he’ll have to live.
He’ll grow to hate to world he knows
With little love to give.

And down the street the sirens scream
In perfect harmony.
A desperate race to save a life
From drive by destiny.

Not far away a homeless man
Lies quietly down to sleep.
His bed a filthy alleyway
Where no one sees him weep.

His sole possessions by his side
He dreams of distant hope.
A ship that sails beyond his reach,
But still he learns to cope.

And somewhere in the distance
Bullets streak across the sky,
To find their fatal target
As another dealer dies.

His life was lived beneath the shame
Of all the lives he trashed,
And ended as he turned his back
To count his sacred cash.

We’ll hear it on the morning news,
Another fateful night.
Much like the ones that came before
Forgotten, out of sight.

Tomorrow’s yet another day
Beyond the silent screams.
The streets will look much brighter
Than the darkness makes them seem.

But in the shadows of our mind
We feel a sense of pain,
And wonder if the lives we lost
Are worth the life we gain.


The Eclectic Pen » All Stories by Alan (arkrebel) -

Member Comments


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Comments 1 to 3 of 3
IONE L. (zaneygraylady) - 1/29/2007 12:39 PM ET
Beautiful empathy expressed.
Claudia (BrokenWing) - 2/3/2007 7:20 PM ET
Very evocative of the cruelty of the mean streets and the desperation of poverty and the indifference of most people to the suffering of our fellow human being. Well done.
Selena E. (Rayne) - , - 8/22/2009 9:05 PM ET
Beautiful.
Comments 1 to 3 of 3