Tenements Poems | Examples

How Much of Life

    How much of life do we catch
       as we walk briskly past windows
     behind each a drama unfolding

     How much of life do we miss
       as we speed past tenements teeming
     with primal emotions, like downed power lines
       alive with passion and angst 

     How much of life can we know as 
       as we fly across continents
     spanning time zones of populations divers
       running the gamut from AI-creators and
     manipulators to prep cooks, no-counts and killers 

    How much of life would have enriched us if attention were paid
      to the windows on the journeys that you and I've made

Colors of the Wind

pause to hear a storm
listen to its vast noises
admire its voices
winds that blew in infamy
crackled as romantic fires

state huts wade through muck
spiders and newborns pancaked
trouble from the breeze
it stretched over our tall walls
but into their tenements

furious horses
unimagined violence
warfare wind wallops
nests shaken out by breezes
some people gather again

Even Slums Have Parks

I walked as a grey kid
lost in his own hometown streets.

When my slow mind
began to see more clearly
it saw brick dusted air
and a sunlight blotched with yesterday's scabs.

There were small parks in that part of the city,
where the shabby slept and fornicated,
a wilted grass
was dotted with used condoms
and patchworked with dog urine.

We thought it fine
to explore those sleazy acres
parents behind us, we running ahead.
as if we were discovering paradise.
The clouds would give way,
and a light fell upon this new world of ours
as if newly painted.
For a while, we kids saw each other as
playmates and not intractable rivals.

Later, back in the crowded reek
of the crumbling tenements,
we grew soul-blind once more.

We hoped that the God
we had been instructed to love
occasionally watched over us,
that perhaps once a week
He checked us all out,
from the far side of a city park.

High Rise Legends

London growls under the tread
of diesel driven dreams.

A stork visits,
an attic full of discarded toys.
White mice sleep in pajamas,
made of childish nightmares.

Barges reek still, just as when,
sweat was as common as dirt.

A window in Baker Street,
opens to let pipe smoke out,
it uncoils in the air
like a left-handed genie.

Meat mongers return to their,
gore-soaked cradles
before the dawns leery light.

The city is a fable,
there is fuel oil seeping,
through tunnels and runnels,
where entrenched gutter snipes
lie low and wait.

Denizens' crabwalk
along Regents Street
barking Chinese commands
at oppressed corgis.

Stately towers are pressure washed,
until they shed a dark sunlight
that fractures ferrous raindrops.

Tenements sink under the weight,
of red carpets
until the blood flows
out of them.

London by night,
is a veneer,
a crust
of low expectations.

Epistolary Ghosts

I spent three hours
& forty-eight dollars
in a used bookstore

Dust filled the air as I
cracked the spines of a thirty
year old book wide open

Baby blue, sun-stained, hard cover
of Francois Villon, filled
with Greater and Lesser Tenements

and a secret. Tucked in yellow
pages of the long-neglected tome
was a postcard, sent to Scotland.

I have yet to read a piece
of prose, much less 
a compelling poem that begins

with a hook half as charming
as this epistolary question—
“Have you been haunted by any Highland ghosts yet?”

I am unsure of the result,
I don’t know if any spirits
even roam the rolling Scottish hills

But without a doubt,
that humble author’s words
pleasantly haunt my own pen.

The Break

They sat so low and beneath the troubled sky.
With a mind in gray, amongst the southern clouds.
There was no light or loves to be found.
Only a shadowed silence that covered their haze.
And a persistent phase that sickened their gaze.

They shifted their eyes toward the white blank page.
Their small simple book laid waiting in their hands.
It was deprived and senseless, a hollow reflection.
For neither of them would the words rise to grace.
Only the sky and clouds, to instill their disgrace. 

Yet in the soulless solitude came a sudden break.
The rain began to pour and touched the shaded page.
It touched them too, falling into their black hair.
Without a care for thoughts or patterned sentiments.
Weathered and present, tapping at the tops of tenements.

They rose their eyes to meet the given change.
Used their mind to listen and their sickness the same.
Then embraced the coolness that stroked their face.
And in the tender caresses, they found traces of light.
Remembered and realized, they then began to write.

Glesca Weans

Grouin up in Glesga wis nae mean feat
Pleyin in the back courts an dreepin the wass
Plouterin in puddles manky water sploshing aboot,
Searching in yon mucky middens fur treasure
Thrown oot by the families in the closes.
Fur a fitba a pile o rags weideh doon wi aw sorts o things
Or a tanner ba made tae test yer skills dribbling roon
Bricks, holes an buckets burnt through.
Some wi nae shin baries wis the thing 
An naething caught except wee beasties in the hair.
Holy jumpers an maukit breeks like a uniform 
Worn tae mark ye oot as livin in tenements raw.
Aye aww wis puir always skint fur buying scran
Except faither oan a Friday nicht at the boozers 
Getting fu wi his pals forgettin the weans,
Crying at hame an when he came in mither 
Wid aways get the blame .
Aye the weans o glesga wur a hardy breed,
All ways stervin an needin a feed,
That wisnae allus therr a feast wis a jeely piece.
When they grew an produced men o valour,
Or men o wealth an fauncy cars,
Ne,er forgot that they were a Glesga wean.

Sunset Over Yellow Tenements

The hours fade away
Like old men at evening
Wearied of the day
As their lives drift by,
Like the slow /swift sailing 
Of clouds in a margarine sky
And fall in flakes as the pendulums sway
To those man-imagined measures of decay.

Noir

It’s the rewrite of horrors noir, with no thobe, just a Kufi, and dirty black sweats. 

Vibrations striking ears with no lobes show precisely how dirty black gets.

A screenshot of a touchscreen keyboard shows the flows when nerdy blacks fret.

Colossal pets are healed and rebuilt by the pens of wordy black vets. 

That fish looks good, Girl.

Get the oil ready, while I toil steady on the soil levy, to keep my domain imminent.
I’l be back for lunch, libations, and lineaments, while we plan our way out of cursed tenements.

Massage my back with that juicy a**. Attach a nipple to my goose skin flask, and I’ll revise the countenance on your Tutsi mask, and rewrite the  horrors noir.

Quiet, Too Quiet

The tenements were quiet, too quiet
small eyes peered through
cracked curtains, catching a glimpse
of the chaos below.   How could 
that many people be so quiet?
The wind moved the wet bras 
hanging on the line like dead
octopus tentacles, blocking
the view for a brief moment,
a long moment, a lifetime.  Who
is that there?  Who fell?
Why was the balcony door open?
To hang laundry?  So sad.
Wailing police cars and
ambulances rush up, but noone
is around, noone peers out the
curtains anymore, she died, alone.

Last Call

A lonely yellow butterfly flits along a crisp fall breeze as other life forms seek out a warm refuge from the approaching night's freeze. Rigor mortise leaves lie shapeless in corpse patterns on my uncut late autumn lawn like soldiers lost in battle, all helpless to the coming elements of an Ohio winter. Naked trees reveal a last nest or two swaying in the breeze like abandoned tiny tenements quietly awaiting Mothers next season of rentals.

Post Code

Where are you? 
Why do you let them do this to me? 
I never chose to be born 
in a housing scheme. 
I never chose the life you gave me. 
The “friends” I am surrounded by, 
the opportunities thrown my way 
– you know like wandering 
around steep canyons of three 
storey tenements with misery seeping 
out most windows– 
every night because YOU deemed WE
were unworthy of anything else. 

Why do you cause me to 
fear the flashing blue – the 
wailing noise screaming 
“me get - you now - me get - you now” 
causing me to search for any wrongdoings 
I may have missed in my own acts. 

Lovely silver bracelets tying me up 
in fear because of the streets I 
tread and NOT the 
acts I have done – 
I am guilty because of a 
post code
 and YOU – justice - scream 
out that I must prove 
my innocence – 
because of a post code.

Unheard Voices

After a cacophony of ramblings,
day bows  gently---
Infants  slumber with ease in  cradles,
lanterns flicker above tavern stools
as mellow winds drift around gold-hued roads
paving the way
for flights of quietude:

Somehow, mothers hush their loved ones
to tend angel dreams
before sunglow ascends… while elders pat
loyal dogs in tenements far from home:
And young girls close overused iPods,
widows reminisce; single fathers
unlock the fence, tired—
Somehow, heartbroken women lay
on empty chairs alone,
Lovers  fondle   sigh deeply relieved.

This is nightfall. Its language of voices
breathes through different tones,
climbing into our hearts
where we exhale syllabic pain and glory,
until  robin-wings  unravel our incantations
to liberate us against hidden wails.


~
For PD's Impress Me with an Old Poem (002) Contest
Written 12/2018 ,S.O.
Resubmitted 10/7/2020

If Ever I Had a Country : Xxxvii and Xxxviii

IF EVER I HAD A COUNTRY : XXXVII - XXXVIII

			XXXVII

If ever I had a country
And if ever by some magic I were the Minister of Housing Development
I'd make it my life-long mission by swearing upon it as a Holy Sacrement
To rush to the rescue of every poor defenceless and distraught old tenant
At the mercy of villainous old women pests who run or administer housing tenements
With beaks claws sharp canines of vultures hyenas who suck vampirically emoluments
That is, if ever I were by some magic the Minister of Housing Development
And even if I never ever had in Gaie Paree no country


			XXXVIII

If ever I had a country
And if ever by some magic I were the Housing Development Secretary
I'd ordain ripped from every thesaurus encyclopaedia and dictionary
Words which denote or connote that special breed of vilely hissing spying bodies
Concierge Housekeeper Portero Janitor and all such idiotic parasitic discrepancies
And free the sleepless care-worn tenement city populations from these harpies
That is, if ever by some magic I were the Housing Development Secretary
And even if in Gaie Paree I never ever had no country

© T. Wignesan - Paris, July 26, 2018

In the Rhythm of a Train

Inspired by : ‘From a train carriage’.  by Robert Louis Stevenson. In the rhythm of a train:  in 15 lines, 112 words. diddly dar diddly dar.  





START ENGINES, SIGNALS ON GREEN.



THERE’S SO MUCH YET, THAT NEEDS TO BE SEEN.



LEAVING GLASGOW AT A SLOW PACE.



SANDSTONE TENEMENTS FULL IN YOUR FACE.



ONTO THE BRIDGE OF IRON WE RIDE.



PASSING OVER THE ANCIENT CLYDE.



BREATHING SCOT’S AIR,  CRISP AND PURE. 



SOON TO ARRIVE AT HAUNTED DALMUIR.



WAS IT A PHANTOM THERE, WE SAW.



THE SIGNAL BOX AT GARELOCHHEAD,



EIGHTEEN LEVERS, IT IS SAID.



THERE TO PULL FORWARD AND TO HEAVE BACK.



TO GUIDE THE TRAIN ONTO THE RIGHT TRACK.


SINGLE LINE, NOTHING SPOKEN,



CANNOT GO THROUGH WITHOUT A TOKEN.



117 words.

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