A Serenade To The Streets Poem by Wesongah David

Can’t you dance no more,
Like you used to in your maiden days?
Can’t you waltz no more,
Like you used to in your boyhood?
And for how long shall you ring alarm bells,
Over the sweet boiling blood under the street llights?
For how much longer,
Shall you hold us hostage to your monotones?
We need to shout ‘ole ole’
To the passing sirens of the Black Maria,
Defeated unto blackness,
And recite the Ave Maria in the after eulogy!
We need to scream mama mia,
To the gunshots rent through the air,
Rendering 7th avenue gross but glossy.

Shall you not make life hell for me,
Like you did in your concrete days?
Shall you not make days for me,
Longer than the equinoxes and solstices’ combined?
I need to feel you to the bone,
Chilling and trashing like you did,
The yesteryears now pure nostalgia,
That my future generations shall attentively,
Be lulled to sleep with thereafter.

Shall we not join hands,
And hope, hope, like we did?
For a better ‘morrow down our asses?
Shall we not sit in gloom,
At the sound of the garbage tracks,
Filling the quota to rations of the hounds?
Shall we not run-hop and die thereafter,
Sweetened by the site of our struggles,
Remedied by the belief of a concrete flower garden,
In heaven!
Sweet love by thee we submit,
In heaven



W.08