Poems

Street boy

I lament as the scent of blind and careless feet trod my sight,

Daily they pass, scoffing at my face mutated from skin to pure black and scrapes.

I lay there, paralytic and frozen by words choking my bleeding self-esteem,

I can walk but my strength to walk is stung by mother's killer mouth.

I am stink like my dad, I am better dead like my dad - he must be a curse,

For I am alive in the shadows of his persona.

I drink from the waters kissing the grounds, waters that already adorn tyres,

Dogs and rats - I am just a boy living in the streets.

My back screams for a cushion to love it,

Its tiring of stones beating bones grows thick and unbearable.

My teeth hide behind a yellow curtain, in fear my tyrant breath -

Approach with extreme caution.

The locks on my head are paraded with the horror of scabs,

And my food comes with stones trailing me - I trespass for survival.

I am a street boy since I was eight - eight years since these streets hauled me.

The darkness comes with dreaded teeth, gnawing for flesh to eat,

They come in cars of glamour and hands washed in deceitful cash and gold.

Three times I am stabbed; my face draws the portrait of my ordeal,

Six times I was ganged, my twisted jaws testify without fear and trembling.

I am a street boy; mommy flung me there when she painted my face with urine,

When she dressed my hands with boiling porridge, she tossed me there.

This is who I am; a street boy whose heart only beats sorrow,

Whose tongue knows only the favour of hopelessness.

- David Knight