Runaway by Winged Strawberry Girl

This poem was written for two prompts: Poefusion’s Tuesday Title prompt for this week (“Evening Is The Whole Day”) and for Read Write Poem Prompt #48: What is the collaboration we speak of?

The first Read Write Poem link is to the prompt’s announcement itself; the second posting is here, where Read Write Poem folks posted one word or more each and Nathan Moore strung the words together to create the jump-off point for this prompt. So, with that being said, I am only one author of this poem; go to the second RWP prompt link above to see who else contributed. And enjoy the poem.

-Nicole

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Evening is the whole day in this rabid, livid, living nightmare
for the tatterdemalion who slink across chrome alleys, these
spider veins in the ass of this city.

Their former homes, their villas, are depleted of the memories
of the sacred tablature, verses, choruses, and drawn images
they left in the wake of their teenaged suffering. Only the
antiquated courtyards of their parents’ minds host
these anything but tribal artifacts.

Nobody from their old neighborhood would recognize these
children nowadays, except that the mournful shadows of
their souls which reside in their eyes remain untouched.

Tonight, they move through these alleys in measured silence,
punctuated by hushes and groans; yet the civil guards clad
in lawman blue scream obscenities at them as they try to
move unnoticed under the eyes of night. Lost meditations
of parental and communal rejection resurface as fresh,
new wounds from the verbal knives issued from the lawmen’s lips.

I hope that their brilliance will not be lost though my banal,
forgettable words. I tenuously scavenge for better, brighter,
incandescent words to pull their suffering into focus, to
show what American suburbia has jettisoned, these misfits -
some with queer souls inside vibrant houses of flesh, some
who choose to wear blackness on the outer walls of their
houses, some who sleep inside houses of ideas dissonant
from the straight rows of conformity around them.

I hope that you know that these streets are not worthy of them.
I hope that you will understand that their brilliance roams under
the nose of a greedy, coarse cannibal that does not care
that they have already died once – it only wishes to kill
them for its own need, its own hunger, its own amusement.

I hope that these are not your children, your grandchildren,
your nieces and nephews. For if they are, then you one day will
stand before their shining, mournful eyes, and you will have
to answer why. Why you let them become blue notes jettisoned from
your perfect life symphony. Why you did not write a symphony
of love for them to live and resound in as bright, clarion notes.

You will have to answer why they are nobody’s children.

And I doubt that your that answer will be good enough.

Written 10/15/08
© 2008 Nicole Nicholson and the folks of Read Write Poem. All Rights Reserved.

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