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Poem

I remember as a young child,
sitting on the stone steps
of my South Philadelphia
neighborhood,

Inquisitively witnessing
the massive amounts
of scattered debris,
sprinkled across
the concrete sidewalks
& black asphalt streets...

Like a nuclear waste site
of embittered souls in retreat,
from something I had yet to really meet,

but what interested me
was the clear
& dark
& brown
& green
empty broken bottles that seemed
to create its own dangerous art form,
that spelled lacerations & abrasions...
upon our beautiful African skin tones...

when we tripped & fell
against the portraits frail details,
which were once completely filled
bottles of bubbly ginger ale...
& Pepsi
& coca-colas
& mountain dews
& doctor peppers,

that seemed to capture
the juicy flavored dreams
& lives magnified inside,
the revealing glass receptacles
of thirst quenching desires...

Now guzzled up
by the romantic mirage of life,
where many had not become recycled
and was savagely tossed like dice...

shattering onto inner city floors
now called ghettos
& hoods
& boroughs
landing in tar & concrete crevices
like too many needles in a hay stack,
fragmented, kicked & ravaged -
but not unnoticed...

because, now whenever I am
walking down my block thinking about
my next moves to empowerment,
something slightly glitters
from within the dark
sparking peripheral vision -
sharply piercing my eyes to notice;

and I am reminded of all
the shattered lives, that lie
parallel amongst the debris
of all these broken bottles...

Ray X. Johnson 5/18/99

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