In a crowded room filled with high society, and
In the facade of decadence, plays the Back Street Symphony
Winos falling asleep covered in yesterdays news
A lone saxaphone player, playing the blues
Neon signs and desinger lines are giving him his cues
He says "I've paid my dues"
I've got front row tickets to mainstreet
Walkin' by, don't know who you'll meet
A freak show on every corner
A broken heart walks on as a mourner
In a darkened alley you can hear him pray
Searching for a Savior with some words and a brown bag
Can anyone spare some change for me?
There goes the prom queen, is it a dream?
Hell is open twenty-four hours a day
I have front row tickets to main street
Watching the devils' choir earn their keep
There tearing down the walls in LA
There's a hooker on display, on main street
Categories:
winos, allusion, imagery,
Form: Rhyme
The streets are deserted,
not a single soul is about
even the winos and street bums
are nowhere to be seen.
There are no cars on the road
or any planes in the air
it’s so eerily quiet
you can even hear a pin drop.
We’ve all finished panic buying
and capsuled ourselves within our homes,
peering cautiously out of the windows
of our temporary prisons
as now and again
an ambulance screams by
- With a police car in tow,
to pick up another casualty
of this virus we cannot see.
It’s Apocalypse Now
as nightly
the government reels off the latest grim
figures,
the health workers are working flat out
- and so also are the undertakers!
Nobody can see an end in sight
and we can only pray
the virus doesn’t claim us next.
Categories:
winos, world,
Form: Free verse
i never dreamed i would miss
my first haven.
the dusty little room
filled with a misty smell.
windows covered with
dusty soot, outdoors a
little hell.
the abandon flats with shadowy
visitors at night. the empty liquor bottles
left covering the street.
it was a haven of being
on my own, being alone.
the ragged kids playing ball
with winos refuge from nights ago,
the shiny cadillacs parked
in front of the ragged flats.
the corner liquor store
always a busy place.
stray dogs wander
like the children,
just as stray, just as stray.
the daily belles sitting
on porches waiting for
sunset to hit.
pretty themselves up
to report to their
nightly post.
the liquor store closes
long before night.
whites might not
see daylight if the
store stays open late.
the children retreat,
the dogs stray on,
cadillacs cruise,
and the belles walk on.
and i, i got married,
we moved, i miss
delaware and poe,
just another corner of detroit.
Categories:
winos, change, feelings, image, places,
Form: Free verse
Adhesive hearts
Outstretched to meet
The forming of the day;
Peel our stories
Page by page,
Cast to vacuums
Sucking all we say.
Replacing choice
With fear,
Replacing youth
With age.
We live beneath
The chiclets now,
Where juices
Form conclusions
Of their own.
It is here
We all write
Different verses
Of the same poem
Wearing our time
As frazzled garments
Worn out
Quickly, ending us:
Winos burping
All we own
Hollow logs
Rolling down a hill
With no control.
What separates us
From our dream,
A many colored rain
That we call love.
I have no eye
Of Rembrandt
For your
Jangling bracelets’
Twinkling;
Within this time,
Before adhesive hearts
Can learn to fly.
Categories:
winos, flying, heart,
Form: Free verse
Long prior - I took to the wheel
On a day, fairly, surreal
Amid one of my visits back home
I went to see, tailgating, all alone
My boyhood city. A city on its knees
I began patrolling, unemotionally
Among, the hollowed, disintegrated, arteries
I've gone into a run-down, stepping ground
Of relinquished houses, torched down
Cess-pool of spoiled industries, shook
Dismal, diminishing, to tears look
A catastrophe of block, smoke, and gook
Miles and miles of wrongdoing, invaded places
The most exceedingly awful, that humankind embraces
Free, with the blazing fury
Of youthful, spontaneity
I started to take pictures, ardently
Of drifters, hobos, winos, and the beggarly
Wearing, worn out, robe of strands
And vagrants with solidified hands
Crouched around, enormous, hot drum cans
Without modesty, I eagle-eyed
The crestfallen, with nowhere to hide
That permeates, everywhere, I spied
Offering itself for examination
A photo of urban immolation
I was alone in a no man's homey
And in a no man's city
Categories:
winos, home,
Form: Free verse
Gray smeared sky like a quilt of rags
Winos sip rot gut from brown paper bags
Threadbare cloud crotch splits up the side
Rain pours down, you got nowhere to hide
Cheap umbrella from a street corner pimp
Turns inside out before going limp
Putrid puddles, soggy doggy doo dollops
Are artfully dodged by high-heeled trollops
A rat scurries by with a piece of bread
Like the ant that totes a leaf on its head
You too once held big dreams in your grasp
But they got drowned with a gurgling gasp
You told me before, no you don't stutter
Your genius ideas got washed down the gutter
Now like a scavenger after a flood
You salvage what's left from out of the mud
Ashes to crashes, lust to rust
In the end it only goes bust
Caught in between the future and past
You start out just fine but finish dead last
____________________________
by Brian McClain - Jan 23, 2016
Categories:
winos, angst, beautiful, change, culture,
Form: Rhyme
Broken lives became a long parade of
winos and crumbled plaster
just existing in life.
Categories:
winos, life,
Form: Kimo
Railroad Tracks
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Down by the riverside under the bridge are the masses
of those who have chosen to throw in the towel
Although labels are not mine to place on anyone
These broken discarded shells converge in the revel
Willingly donning the titles blindly playing the roles
Junkies, winos, dealers lets not forget the sluts or whores
Each day I pray that at least one could find the will to live
But reality is a harsh mistress, as I bait my hook with shrimp
Realizing that what I do to the snook isn't so different from
their wasted lives drinking, the poison rotgut and making love
to their mistress crack
Very few that are hooked ever live to tell the tale
There by the railroad tracks the wasted existence has only
the promise of an untimely death
Categories:
winos, life
Form: Prose Poetry
The voices seem to travle through the wall.
Slitther down the sidewalk.
To settle in a place were no one cares at all.
As the painter makes strokes apon a canvas
with black and grey.
Screams fill the streets.
As passing cars cruise alleys
were prostituttes work and the homeless stay.
On rooftops on the hot summer nights.
people dream beyond the jungle.
has on the other side of towm a preist gives
a man his last rights.
A cat turns over a garbage can.
Down at the bar a drunk.
Talks about his far fetched plan.
I'll take you away he tells the barmaid.
spits more ********.
in all hopes just t get laid.
the DJ's voice cuts through the night.
Fan in window sweat filled sheets.
trying to catch a rest befor light.
Another fix and and soon he'll crave more.
Jokes told to empty heart.
As the winos gather in back of liqour store.
The canvas is the slums.
it was a grand old building till sombody in blue torched it.
We exist in its shadow as the night paints
it portrait
Categories:
winos, introspection, life, people, places,
Form: Rhyme
The street sweepers sweep away
At four in the morning and try to clean
It will never change, it does no good
Of yesterday's moral decay
On the avenue of the hungry and mean
The menu, drugs and no food
The city bus stop benches are filled
Junkies and winos sleep there
Dreams of another fix or bottle of wine
Another dead body, one more was killed
The thief took all but his hair
A dead end street filled with swine
A hooker sleeps in the alley
The crack house is open twenty four seven
Business as usual, cops see nothing
The road is a dead end valley
The mindless, think that they are in Heaven
Or what ever life will bring
On this demon boulevard
Where angels dare to fly
And the losers have paid their dues
Where times are always hard
With no tears left to cry
Their choir sings,"The Sixth Street Blues"
Categories:
winos, depression
Form: I do not know?
I am furious!
Who do you think you are asking me "who are you?"
Who am I? Must you ask?
Like so many before you who didn't make
I refuse to sit and do nothing to help us
So I wake at dawn and go to school thinking the entire time that I don't want to be you!
You know who you are:
The politicians, the drug dealers, the business owners, the crack heads and winos, or the
raciest presidents to name a few:
All people who give my name shame.
If you didn't know it hurts me more than it hurts you
Because I am suppose to be just like you
I'm not suppose to go to college and get a degree
or get a job so I can be free.
Have you ever thought about that?
We live in the land of the free however; nothing you want to be is free.
When you eat, drink, fight, cry, drive, and survive
You pay taxes that i eventually pay.
It is because you are a wino, alcoholic, business owner, and or president
You are me.
And I am the America that the rest of the world doesn’t not see.
And might I ask who are you again?
Categories:
winos, black-african amerbusiness, me, drug,
Form: Burlesque