"But first, baby, as you climb and count the stairs (and they total the same), did you, sometime or somewhere, have a different idea?
Is this, baby, what you were born to feel, and do, and be?"

-Kenneth Fearing



Friday, June 18, 2010

May Break Our Bones

*





Down all these streets, in all these cars,

we’re safe enough from sticks and stones.

Although none of it feels like it’s really ours,

just so much steel and skin and bones



I’ve wandered through a city,

where streetlights have eclipsed the stars.

Nothing I touch connects with me,

just empty streets and passing cars



Children draw their futures bright.

on plastic tables, soon outgrown.

the use for hope not yet in sight,

still content with sticks and stones.



We never became what we wanted to be.

We stopped too long, comparing scars.

We never saw what we needed to see,

just had a dream, that wasn’t ours.



Tomorrow, all the lights will change

and we’ll repeat what we’ve always known.

But tonight the world is large and strange

A maze of steel and skin and bones



                             Brent Allard

3 comments:

  1. Wow, I love this! so evocative. Strips this reader down to the bone in a way that is oddly comforting though raw.

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  2. Comparing scars--looking backward too much does steal the NOW from you. I very much love how visual this poem is!

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