ANGRY SILENCE
ERIX INTERNATIONAL - Internet Poem of the Month winner March 1998
There’s a cold wind that’s blowing
Through cardboard city tonight
Huddled bodies in street doorways
Hide from flickering lights
The rain pours down on moving homes
Each one is filled with violence
No one wants to know their plight
There’s just an angry silence
Bright lights have lost their attraction
In a child’s life just begun
A run-away from his mother
No longer called her son
Cigarettes and cups of coffee
Standing on red-light streets
A sad and lonely figure
The office types he greets
Little packets bought in shadows
Will release him from his hell
The world will see his other face
What stories he can tell
Saturday night, the money’s good
The city centre lives
It breathes and breeds the poison
That’s left his life in shreds
In the early hours of morning
While body hides from storm
He thinks of all the wasted years
Of home and love and warmth
Through tears and sorrow, all alone
To live now makes no sense
In darkest hour there’s nothing
Just an angry silence
A sad dark side to London Town I saw every week, that hides behind all that glitters. Meths drinkers, addicts, and young prostitutes living a miserable existence yards from an indifferent public.
Copyright Raymond B. Stone 1998©
Comments
This poem captures the underbelly of most cities. It is incredibly sad and it reinforces Thoreau's contention that most people lead lives of quiet desperation. This situation also leaves those who look on feeling helpless. There is so littel we can do to change it.
The imagery was very powerful.
What a powerful poem. The imagery is so alive/dead (excuse the pun). Every community has an underbelly and this exposes a street life that most citizens have no idea exists. Well crafted and well dsecribed.