Ghetto child, dusty brown face, hopeless eyes, dandelion flower,
piles of dirt surround him.
He quickly runs across glittering pieces of glass
that mimics the sound of ice crushing beneath his
paper-thin soles.
Sirens scream! Radios blare! No angels to be found,
at least not here.
Tall brick building,
six stories high,
so worn and torn from many loveless years.
Baby doll, blond and white,
tossed from the high rooftop late last night,
cracked face,
broken smile,
she once brought solace to a lonely child,
she now lies forgotten amid a maze of discarded trash.
Drunken man leans against a blood-stained wall to
support his failing body,
brown papered-bagged bottle he clenches in his bandaged
hand;
he struggles to reach his lips to swallow its pain-killing
contents.
"How bout a date, sweetness?"
He slurs to two young girls passing by,
who carefully ignore his cry,
but jokingly remark of his haggard condition
as they quickly pace down the noisy garbage strewn street
and he fades within the darkness of the heated night,
without as much as a prayer to soothe his waning soul.
In this neighborhood lost,
at high human cost,
in the heart of the thriving city......
A vision of a neighbor hood, I once knew......