Poetry of the Streets

The Dead
by Michael Creedon

The dead are walking among us.
We're always bumping into each other
on Telegraph Avenue, even on those
rare times when there's no crowd.
There's always a throng.
I spent my brother's last night
on this planet with him, and he
could see beyond.
"I'm going to die, Michael," he said,
"and I'm not afraid."
Now he's always with me.
At the height of a terrible panic,
he cracks a joke, and makes me laugh,
and I'm on safe ground. And
he's not the only one.
I've seen my friend Steve, who blew
out his brains with a shotgun,
often, on Telegraph, Shattuck,
Market. And I've seen others.

The dead are walking among us.
Maybe it's a trick of the brain.
A reminder to behave with dignity.
Fear and guilt are our worst enemies.
We are all going to die
Maybe we'll be nowhere,
or reincarnated.
Maybe we'll be somewhere else
and here too.
Quien sabe?

---

Messages
by Michael Creedon

I'm getting messages
from the Astral Plane.
Other folks don't seem to get them
but I'm not about to complain.
There's something going on
but I don't know what it is.
Might be the Second Coming
might be the hoots of a witch.

I'm not alone when I sleep at night.
People's Park is crowded and cold;
we could use a big bonfire where we
could toast marshmallows and hot dogs.
I'm just a kid at heart so I grow a great
big beard. In the days, people give me
spare change because they have good
hearts. Maybe they see themselves
in me-after all we're not so far apart.
Some of God is in everyone.
Maybe they get messages too.

I'm getting real good messages from
somewhere good and warm.
They have to do with love -
that I should share myself
but if someone doesn't want it, well,
I just lean back and let it go.

---

Nostalgia
by Michael Creedon

I just met a young one (early 20s) sitting
in a niche between two buildings with the
rain coming down on Shattuck Avenue.
He had his hat in front of him upturned
for spare change. He was reading a thriller
by Patricia Cornwell so I stopped and
we chatted about Patricia Cornwell and
similar authors and I put some change
in his hat which was almost empty.
He hitchhiked here to Berkeley
a week ago from Indiana. I haven't
hitchhiked in roughly 30 years,
prior to which hitchhiking
was my basic mode of transportation.
I asked him where he slept at night
and he said he'd found a shelter
and he could eat dinner there too,
but the food was terrible.
I thought of St. Vincent de Paul lunches
about 18 months ago. He hadn't eaten
all day. We wished each other well.
I'm 100 dollars overdrawn at the bank
but after I walked about 50 feet
I turned around and went back.
Gave him a dollar just like
someone once did for me.

---

Visitor from Pluto
by Michael Creedon

He had an honorary role
in Pluto's Space Patrol
and he was sent to earth
to check the sinister rumors
that earth's inhabitants
singled out many men and women
and treated them like dogs
for "homelessness" and "color,"
"belief" and "poverty" and
tormented many people for the
illnesses they had, like "AIDS" and
"addiction" and "alcoholism,"
"bipolar" and "schizophrenia."

And what he came to find out
was not just true but worse -
great persecution going on, such
as he'd never seen a whisper of
on the many other planets.
The reality was a thousand times
worse than the rumors.

So he returned to Pluto, a powerful
planet, and the first vote was to
destroy the polluted planet.
But wiser voices carried the day
and the earth was left to rot
in its own way.

---

Worn Out
by Tyler Flowerday

Inside of my palms
rough hewn and carved from stone on a day
a thousand years ago
that could have been yesterday
Ten callused toes sticking out of shoes
worn out from a whole lot of
everything

Walking through a place so far away
dusty and dry
And it makes my feet hurt
but it makes me realize

Because we all get a little selfish and indignant
White marble suburban frowns
over spilt milk
can't compare to African onyx smiles
over a bag of dry rice

It's time that we let go of
sports cars painted so prettily red by blood
And bank accounts made meaningful
by the drug-addict sleeping by the bank
And start smiling

Tyler Flowerday, a 14-year-old student at Alameda High, is Area winner in the National PTA 2004-5 "Reflections Program" competition for poets.

---

genocide before our eyes: the holocaust of the poorest of the poor

by Judy Jones

tonite
i sobbed

my heart is black and blue
because everytime
i walk outside
i see
my family
of humanity
eating out of garbage
cans
and dying before my eyes
on cold concrete streets

some look at me
begging
others
well they have just given up
don't even bother
to put out a begging cup

our mothers fathers
sisters and brothers
dying in horrid misery
and pain

wonder what kills them first
their broken hearts
or diseased bodies
do their souls
just shrivel up and die

it is the holocaust
of the poorest of the poor
going on
genocide before our eyes

when hitler took
people in cattle
cars to the gas ovens

were they like these people
i see on the streets
silent

their voices vanishing
slowly as the endless
nights simply become too long

no screams moans or sobs
not even a tear
they just put a blanket
over their heads
and wait patiently
for their bodies
to catch up with
their hearts
which cannot be repaired

did people scream
and moan as they
were dragged from their
cells in the nite
to the gas chambers

i wonder
i wonder
could it be
we are ghosts
we are the dead

would the living
warm hearted
compassionate soul
be able
to partake by neglect
in the death
of millions and millions
of people because
they don't have
a dollar

let's see
what were hitler's
reasons for dragging
babies elderly mentally ill
and all the other
innocents to
be murdered

what are our reasons
for allowing these people
to die before our eyes
starving in desperate need of
medical care food and shelter

who is our hitler
surely someone
has ordered this
holocaust all
over earth's shores

oh i know
religions did it
let's blame religions
and if that doesn't work
let's blame politicians
or how bout hollywood

there is a holocaust
of the poorest of the poor
before our eyes
not one of us
can escape nor deny

if twenty million died
before hitler was stopped
who is going to stop us

what if no one does?

we are not showing
human traits
and as we continue with
the death penalty
trying to convince
ourselves murder is right
in any circumstance

more and more
hearts turn to stone
and accept
watching
their families
die eating garbage
on filthy streets

a child will automatically
go up to someone suffering
and try to comfort them
we are born with that trait

and when we are not using it
we have shut off the flow
of the divine in our hearts
which i call god

---

a city of brotherly love
by Randy Fingland

plastic talk
calypsos by
to the salsa beat
hipper two-steppers twirl
on these crumbled streets
proof it's no place

to dance
because the revolution
that'll turn the heat of
compassion up
has yet to show
credible choreography

---

All Roads Lead To Where You Are
by John Rowe

You find yourself trying
to find your way home
with a key in hand that has not
been cut to turn the lock of
any particular door. Pulling out
a map you've carried in your
back pocket, all that shows
when unfolded is a black dot
in its center, marked You are
here, wherever you are.

---

Light Begins
by John Rowe

a sidewalk somewhere

between puddles
of gray water
two figures huddle
embrace their bottles
call each other "brother"

if the sun
illuminates their circle
they wrap into the light

open air
swallows song
as birds fly
to high perches

clouds move
like slow lovers
caressed by the light

upward to atmosphere
where the light
first breaks through

come
back down
two are still centered
in this moment
awaiting the next

---

Body Language
by John Rowe

in between a grimace and scowl
head down, what's up?
earphones plugged in

backpack on his back
packed with bricks perhaps
feet shufflin' across the street

life's a struggle
we know we know
but with a beat beat beat

---

Spare Time?
by John Rowe

Some of the young
want to be older
and some of the old
want to be younger

In the present moment
on a street corner
here or there,
one human being asks another
for some change

Before the one who is asked
does or does not
reach into a pocket,
will time be spared
to make eye contact?
As if to say:
I see you in this moment

Right now
if we don't spare time
for ourselves and others,
what time do we really have?

---

Breakfast Guest
by Maureen Hartmann

At the Sunday morning
free meal in People's Park, a
young woman appears regularly.
Her head is bent over
as in a permanent bow
and opulent reddish hair falls
softly over her face as
she comes through the guest line.
I wonder what bothers her.
She seems to be laboring
under a thousand burdens.
I hope my hospitality at the
breakfast gives her comfort.

---

Home Is Where the Heart Is
by Michael Creedon

Can't sleep. It's dark in here.
You need a shot.

Too much screaming in the night.
Sirens never stop. Gunshots like
Chinese New Year in the Iron Triangle.

You been scratching and nodding
and now the rats are coming.
They can smell the blood.

You been living in a big concrete pipe.
You can hear them snuffling along,
coming closer, red-eyed in your tunnel vision.

You sleep on shit-smeared newspapers,
cook up in a beer-bottle cap with rusty water,
but when the shit hits you just don't care.

Home is where the heart is.
Yours is in a dirty syringe
when you can find enough to put in it.

---

A Hot Cup Of Sanity Which Everyone Deserves
by Christopher Robin

Everyone wants coffee
And everyone deserves it
But some folks can't have any
Because they've been 86ed
You gotta hold it together
No matter how much you talk to yourself
While walking the streets
When someone else shows up in your view
Stop doing it
Let this little test be a measure of your sanity
I do it all the time
I'm really careful
I tilt my eyes to the sky
I'm kicking stones
Furiously scribbling
furiously mumbling...
I am saying A LOT of things please believe
But I still get to have COFFEE
I've got a few dollars
I've stayed out of the madhouse
My social worker only shows up every six months
My friends all have pretty good hygiene...
But it is really a fine fine line...
So if you are sitting in the cafe
In the middle of a weekday afternoon
And one of you has snakes in her bra
And one of you has already drunk a bottle of wine
count yourselves among the lucky
Raise a cup of that bitter, delicious drink
of complete and total sanity
Drink unmolested
Stay as long as you like
Leave a tip

---

Roll of the Dice
by Michael Creedon

Look at the man
with the open wounds on his legs
leaning against a storefront
on Shattuck Avenue, too sick
to ask for change. Anyone can see
that he should be in a hospital.
You don't need ESP to sense
the gangrene moving in.
Once in awhile someone puts a nickel
in his rust-splattered tin can.
What if it was your daughter,
the honor student at UC Berkeley?
She's so splendid.
A glimpse of her
might lift the spirit
of the man with the running sores
on his legs, if he could see her
with his rheumy yellow eyes.
Or it might make him curse life.
And if she passed him by and looked
and saw him, she might be repulsed,
or filled with compassion
at life's seemingly indifferent
roll of the dice,
and put a dollar in his cup.
And probably either way
nothing would change.

---

no child left behind
by Randy Fingland

no one knows me anymore
when I trudge the blocks I've walked before
seek the neighbors of my heyday's habitat
but evidently gone to roost elsewhere with
probably a long string of name changes
full of baby faces come & gone ever mobilely
upward into suburban school atmospheres
while around here classrooms decay into
ominous darkness sufficient to curtail freedom
of movement along city routes of opportunity

---

The Drone
by Teddy Bakersfield

Eighteen slaughtered in the far off land
a deadly strike
the butchery of women and children
the drone kills by instinct

it does not think or feel

America has no remorse
its hands are clean
its collective conscience
suffers no responsibility

Its president is not a war criminal
its Christian voters are not to blame
they committed no crime
they only helped elect one of their own

I wonder about the person who
launched the drone
I hope he too was born again
I hope he believed the message
I hope one day he does not go mad

I hope one day he does not come home
so twisted inside
that he kills by instinct
because he too no longer thinks

nor feels remorse

---

Homeless in the Park
by Mary Meriam

We sit on benches near a bubbling brook, my friend and I.
He notices the view, the wooded hillside rising like a book
we never read, the clouds and wind on cue to play the parts
that nature plays so well.
The drama enters east to west, from wing to wing.
We sit and wait. We cannot tell what part we play or
if we speak or sing in this production. Daylight rests on me.
I see my hand is resting on my thigh.
I like the way it looks, alive and free.
Perhaps it also feels a little shy.
Fade out to dusk, the curtain starts to fall.
They never said what mattered after all.

---

Marching Song
by Michael Creedon

Tiny birds brown eggs
here come the B-52s again.

When's the sun coming up?
Jar of water shimmies and shakes.

Hand grenade far away
I can smell the break of a peaceful day.

On the street shivers & moans
cold done cracked the street people's bones

---

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