The Street Where Dignity Dies

There's a street somewhere, in or out of town

Past a house that no one sees

With a door that everyone enters and exits

But they never leave their prints.

 

See this street is real important

Not the house, and not the door,

But it always goes unnoticed

Though its traveled all the time.

 

This street, it leads outside the world

Into a place that's not the world

It isn't short it isn't long

It isn't on the map.

 

But those of us who visit it

Are promply extradited

From the hordes of people

Who hold their noses high.

 

This place is on the corner of

Rock bottom and the lowest low

Rock Avenue and Hard Place Way

Decision Lane and S**t Face Court

 

You're broken and you're lost here

You leave your soul alone here

You lose your mind; you do not care

You spend your dimes to quicken death.

 

Now I believe what will intrigue you

What you really want to know

Is what is it that one sees

When lying on this street.

 

I've heard of blue elephants,

I'vve seen the pink kangaroos

And someone even told me

trees melt across the sidewalks, but

 

What I remember most-

Listen close, the story's true

When sitting cross legged

I watched a beating heart die.

 

Of course the body it left behind

Had been gone for awhile,

But there it lay on bleeding streets

Gushing keeping the sound

 

A songbird cried above me

Wept tears I thought it lacked

And to my right a car beeped a song

While lit ablaze like a funeral pyre

 

Veiny and leaking fluids on the tar

Its supervena cava pointing to the east

Like reaching fingers, pulmonary veins

Pointed to the north

 

I gripped the grass blades closest to the asphalt

So the flooding street wouldn't up and carry me away

Each beat in succesion, slower than the first

Until finally, the beating stopped.

 

All went silent then

Mother Mary arrived to take me home

The fire out, the music done

The story ends, the sound gone

 

Now I haven't told many, and I won't tell all

My story is reserved for few

If you find that street, listen for beats

That dying heart does not die alone

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reviews

[Kerry]

I like the flow of this poem. I did spot a couple of syntax issues, but they may have been purposeful. For example, you capitalized "Rock Avenue" and "Hard Place" but not the word "way" in that same line. In the line below you did not capitalize "s**t face court" or the word "lane." Other than those types of issues, I liked this piece. It conveys meaning well. I especially like that part about the street being well traveled. Very nice.