In the mornings, building staff,
Equipped with long green hoses,
Wash sidewalks down, attentive to
What lurks beneath their noses.
Most often, it’s what’s left behind
By dogs which poo or piddle,
With owners who, despite the law,
Obey it very little.
Though yesterday, a homeless man
Sprawled on the sidewalk, sleeping.
Though he was dry, surrounding him,
Was proof of clean-up keeping.
Aside from where he lay, the street
Was wet from recent hosing,
A kindness from the worker,
Or at least what I’m supposing.
I’ve sometimes gotten spritzed a bit,
An accidental spraying,
But I was touched to see this dose
Of empathy displaying.
Sidewalks
Sliding through streets, with the slightest of ease;
Life is completed, by the breath of your breeze.
Let the curves go, and relinquish control.
You'll be amazed, by the depth of your flow.
steaming sidewalks
terrorizing cats and dogs
injuring their paws
my shirt is soaked
sweat running down my back
one hundred degrees
autumn welcome
where is october
i yearn for her breeze
To you who hides your face,
Sitting on cardboard
Asking for change, with your cardboard sign
Is it change you want? Or coins?
I am frustrated by your lack of motion-
Sometimes there is the puppy eye,
The sleeping angel,
The cardboard cut out, tent
Sometimes there's rocking,
I've also heard bothered screams.
What is the condition of your heart?
Where are all your dreams?
Do you have a mental or intellectual condition?
Did someone let you go? I am here to listen, don't you know, don't you know.
The organization giving out blankets- stopped- it was covid, and they did not know you do not wear socks, and it is forecast to snow.
Don't lite that pipe! Stop using needles!
With all the things you do, it's hard not feeling sorry for you.
But 'sorry' is certainly not the best action, in this situation-
Some people speak kindness and hope and civil unsatisfaction.
'Cause the way things are,
Is deserving of reaction.
Those drugs are dirty,
And I seek revenge,
for two of my neighbours,
And one of my friends.
November sidewalks unsightly grow
Leaves mingling, sloppy with slush and snow
Where dandelions bloomed between cement cracks
Now pray bugs that warmth come back
We strolled the broken sidewalks
Of a little chilly lake town
Caught between mountains
Talking about art and money
Smelling curiously of aged wood
About who cared anymore for culture
And stopped in to lunch at
A corner cafe where two meals
Cost us twenty because we were hungry
I snapped a photo of the storybook
Book store's curlicue gingerbread
For a moment we were sculpture
Frozen, captured, cast in time
No one important was around to see us
Only a robot Santa and a traffic cop
I slog my worn-out feet
from side to side
picking up dead cigarettes,
through city sidewalks
while I wait for a release.
Like the silhouette
of things to come,
cigarettes,
like a corpse in a mortuary,
lie stomped on
kissed by the lips of
others, addicts
like me.
My tired eyes, in search
of sustenance to feed
my withdrawals,
follow the misery
soaked into
the sidewalk cracks
and into the graffiti walls
of the darkened alley streets.
Aspirin or Tylenol
can’t relieve
the throbbing hammers
pounding away.
In my head, only
the moment
when my hunger is fed,
will my affliction,
for a split second
be released.
Can you feel it?
It’s orgasmic, euphoric…
I need it,
I want it
the rush
as fast as it surges,
is as fast as it’s gone.
I live by it, for it’s
my muse that lets me free.
All knots that strangle me, unravel.
It’s only for a minute of peace
and by now it’s obvious to everyone,
my eyes hide no secrets.
"we’re fine," they whisper,
"we’re great together," they mumble.
I slog my worn-out feet
from side to side
through city sidewalks
picking up dead cigarettes,
'til it's time for my next release.
Observe the bending of tree & flower.
To rages; a gale… in tempestuous hours.!
Rain deep in curtain, makes interplay;
Fresh night skies, await the sun in power.
Morn air stirs, Lady’s chinking; breakfast crocks.
Day-streams 'cross backyards, endless blocks..
Splashes as sound; tables, are scrubbed..
Cars all hues; white thru red, too! radios rock!!
Sprinklers now silent; birdsong calls,
Gardener’s clipping the creeper on walls
Children’s cries are echoes around
Fountains splash in foyers & malls!!
Gundog flushes the dove; white ahead!
Tools are re-sharpened in timber shed,
Lilac buds blossom! Midst threaded verde,
In abundant gardens, Man & Woman wed.."
© Joe Maverick.co.uk
To know more about this poem (well you know)
Sultry city sidewalks, the people come and go.
Some look straight down, some look away.
For no one should they know.
The city heat begins to beat the sweat into your brow.
A country song just sounds so wrong under a cafe awning.
As the taxi man devoid of fare sits half alive and yawning.
You swear that hell is rising up from underneath the pavement.
Emiting all it's acrid sense to capture man's enslavement.
The grace that comes when old man sun decides to go away.
Gives peace a chance to slowly dance until another day.
The sobriety of others cross
Our paths in shadowed lines
Their blur, a noise, a quiet breeze
Recedes in stretching time
Small permanence of our design
That we exchange in parts
Across the cobbled stone we stride
Hard fashioned, in who we aren’t
Some people use it to get from
One place to another.
Others live day and night on it.
Some are discovered on it,
While others die on it.
But now matter what,
A sidewalk is just that.
No one seems to pay attention
To those cracks and crevices
On that white concrete.
They can't.
Their lives are too full,
Too much worry,
Too many bills to pay,
Too many aches and pains,
Breakfast to make,
Lunches to make,
Dinner to make,
Cleaning, dusting, filing, taxes,
And did I mention bills to pay?
They jog or sprint through the day
Instead of stroll.
People learn to dart on the
Meaningless sidewalk.
The walk that takes them from
One part of life to another.
I watch the squirrels on the wires up high,
I call those lines sidewalks in the sky.
They sit sometimes watching the hussle below,
Every one in a hurry with nowhere to go.
They walk the wires and climb down to the ground,
Find there food and turn back around.
There balancing act none can compare,
As they walk those wires way up in the air.
Moving around,way up high,
The safest route,the sidewalks in the sky.