When you first heard Aretha sing, did you know just what she meant?

Or did you ponder the words, in your mouth.

Cloying.

Stuck to your tongue with cement.

R. E. S. P. E. C. T.

I've got no idea what it means to me.

Radio news bulletin in the car
the last item read in those mellifluous tones
is about a seven-year-old boy
struck and killed by a car
in a poor suburb of Wellington.

The protocol around the legal and privacy issues
means it’s “no name, no pack drill”,
but he was someone,
someone’s son, grandson
perhaps even great-grandson.
He had probably had siblings,
definitely friends and playmates.

Somewhere in a house with
inadequate winter heating,
where the household income is
constantly under siege
and life never rises above a struggle,
there is a mother and a father
who bear this greatest grief.

 Andrew M. Bell

a toddler's summer of the wondrous....falling asleep in
fireflies' glow

Moved around a lot
-Cockle-jocked kid
plastic with newness
Trailers dusty
roses blousy with thorns and white
pecked leaves mottled.
Resist these yards’ allure
avoid the
crackers’ friendly waves
Pedal to the Haven
piles of fill, construction
reduced tombs of left over
concrete
bricks mounds of playtimes
trenches in which to ****
off.
Trenches in which
mosquito larvae swim
skeezle-legged and
willow branches are
whips
pieces of drywall
soaked grenades and
wooden
are the guns.  
Summer haircut flat nest of
stubble
face and scalp burnt.   Enough
pieces of bikes to Frankenstein
one fine ride.
From the top of the hill
mawed youth
rumbles down to barrel
roll crescendo’d
stops.  Let the
good
times.
Close out the day draw its
petty dread adrenalined
Panting cuz you are
late and he said
six.
Sectioned eight
pink stucco flakes and
sweetened lead.
Tatty shades
shriven.
He’s a tar cracked heel
small white dot
white
blink
blot
thinks about a
lot, these yards
landscapes drifted, curled with
feet to face, conserve his
heat.

Have I captured your soul?
Your tone sepia as if nostalgic
A memory a place held in my heart
Can I hold your words a little closer
They feed me in the dark dreary night
Sometimes your words are as colourful as a child's painting
There's no faking sincerity
Your words cast a rainbow over me.

Sorrows of the world.
A child that cries, an angel that fall.
A child that starves, a thousand of stars fall.
A child that is sad, a human heart stop.
And for a child, this heart will stop.

I have been waiting
for her to pick me off the shelf

To remember me as fondly
as I dream of her nightly

Wanting nothing more than to be
used like her favorite toy

The one she played with as a child
when holding each other came simple

For her to lay me next to her heart
during the dim nights under gods shadow

Giving up on the complexities
of the never ending day before us

While engulfing each other in stories
of an emotion we remembered as love