POETRY: A poem–

–one that I’ve tweaked a bit and that I may decide to have a go at in Flash, or at the very least, Movie Maker again just ’cause it’s fun to do:

Asleep in the Streets

Clouds in sheets drift above

the streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant,

slower than the M.E. draws the

reddening tarp over the head

of a small black boy.

Only eight

and in the way.

He was at play–

the game of kickball

with his friends was never meant

to end without a winner.

Silver spinning bike wheels,

red streamers sailing

in a wake of banded ones.

Tried and true

blood brothers more than

curly hair and dark liquid eyes

could ever call them same,

find their names

written on the peeling paint

of hallways where their mamas cry

daily, out of habit.

Mottled mortar clouds

creep along graffitied walls,

block by block pursuing

more young savvy dudes;

taller, swift and quiet as

the hawks that soar above

Bed-Sty streets.

On faster feet they run,

yet never quick enough

to leap beyond, rise over, reach up

for the sky and fly away.