if these streetlights could speak,
they'd narrate stories that would
keep you awake at night

and if these corners could scream,
they would never stop screaming

and if these streetlights could speak,
and these corners could scream,
would you listen?

are you listening?

The streets scream with unbridled joy.
They are a bird in a cage that has just broken the lock.
They are a stallion in a pen who has spent their
life staring at the mountains,
whose legs have finally found the momentum to
                      Run.
They are a man in the desert,
                      Thirsty and Starving,
who has found himself a banquet in a rainstorm.
They reach their hands into the sky,
praising the sun and the moon and the stars
and God, whoever that may be.
They collapse onto their knees,'
head in their hands,
overwhelmed by a newfound
                    Hope
they haven't felt in four years.

They live again.

The streets are humans united with the knowledge that maybe,
just maybe,
they will be okay.
There is a long way to go still,
but streets are made to get from one place
to another.

We have broken out of that cage.
We are running toward the mountain.
We will soon eat our fill of the banquet laid out
for the hungry, the thirsty, the poor, the sick,
the dying, the naked.

There is a long way to go.
But for now, we sit in traffic on the street and
honk our horns and
raise our hands and
celebrate.

The streets scream with unbridled joy.

everyone has gone back to suburbia,
city streets are dangerous, if you look
at someone cross eyed, it earns you death.

don’t celebrate this madness,
mourn it in black, it has a taken
a pandemic to school me again.

this a broadcast, shout out, email me
if you know how I’m feeling and can
share what other mutualities crisscross.

Do you like Jazz? Me neither.
Flouncy bouncy dresses? Nah!
Sweats? Unnecessary, I can sweat
just by concentrating.

You like me, own soulful bluesy singers,
femme fatales, who coax and croon,
wet the spun threads of subtle emotive,
who live by light of candles votive,
I live in black, day and nighttime,
write in midnight blue, a woman who!
takes no b.s. and doesn’t ever take no
for an answer...

Without the courage to end it,
Or the will to go on,
The vagrant wanders aimlessly
Under the artificial lights

The gypsy hymns and railway trails
which you followed into the valley of your trials
Lady Luck brought you enough street child wisdom and thief given kindness
to turn the tracks around and the train whistle to wake me.
Desert saint of your weathered ways
with your thin wrists and moon gleaming lips
Hope to you was like a blinding sunrise, painful to acknowledge, yet sorely lacking without
Never could be without your Larkspur boquets and marigold wreaths
August heat heavy with the scent of cypress trees
Apollo of the dusty sea, flooded the cliffs with light like withering flames
born from boxcar visions and a desperate hunger for that windblown hallelujah we chased down the starlit trestles like missionaries. Summoned from our streetcar medallions, vagabond nymphs, rumbling through moth-eaten states and barren dusks, lazy moon gazing upon our dolorous times and wild days and all our rough and rowdy ways.
No need to heed the judgements of the stars.
With the arid land so wild and lonesome- we weave our own muse into the railway line- followed back to when you were my home, and the streets were the laurel crown of your vagrant fortune.