"Dirty Streets And Barbed Wire"

A remake of my poem "A City In Ruins".

She has a body like dirty streets and barbed wire.
Her face reads “Warning: I’ve forgotten where I came from, and I really don’t know where I’m going, so watch out.”
Her bones creek like the doors in that abandon house she woke up in 8 years back.
Her knees aren’t afraid of pain;
they’ve seen too many sorrys.
She tells people “My names not important, but you can call me gorgeous.  Please, call me gorgeous.”
That’s all she wants, is for people to not look at her the same as they do now.
To not only see broken homes and tilting picture frames.
She sees the world through dollar bills because she’ll never be close enough to it.
She loves to count the heads as she bottle rockets down the street like speed and methanphetamines.
She cries, every night, better days streaming on the end.
Her skin is screaming black and blue like national colors, because pain has been home ever since she was 7.
She smells like Stayfresh gum and 33 years of falling to the ground.
No one knows her and yet everyone sees her.
On that corner.
Trying to make sense of it all, and she knows, that the ends will never meet if her legs keep falling away from each other;
she just wants to stop.
She’s seen one too many rapes, and been a part of four too many.
She’s just looking for the rabbit hole in the backseat of cars.
She just wants out of here.
She can’t get out of this day to day night terror.
She has the moon bleeding into the background of her eyes.
Fireworks pop inside her veins like heroin, she just wants out.
She just wants a way to pull the rusty barbed wire from her chest.
To bury the dead and leave it where it lies, instead of carrying it like a shoebox full of “Where the f*** am I anymore?!”
And regrets, and shame, and countless names of men who’ve seen her as just pretty enough for 3 to 25 minutes.
It’s sad, that make shift beauty comes at $75 on a good day.
And I...see this struggle.
I see it in her eyes when they sink into her hope chest.
I know she hopes to be able to see the world clear, like she used to, instead of grime and muck.
Sometimes she wants to die, but I make sure angels keep her alive.
Make my prayers mean something.
Make them your own little fortune cookie chalk full of dreams and better places.
I know your pain.
I want you to know that somebody out there still cares.
And someone knows how hard you’ve been trying.
I ain’t God, but I can talk to him for you.
I know your bridge to him has been prepacked with C4 ever since you were little.
Fate is just a word.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the only person that needs to be chucking your vision around is you.
So shine.
Explode like roman candles bouncing off of Saturn’s rings.
Make me proud.
Make your mom proud.
She knows you are better than this.
Love and a smile is one step back, all you gotta do is pick yourself up.
I, you, we all know the lady with the soul  like Polish ghettos refracted through dingy gutter puddles and a heart like a f***in’ light house.
You know her, body broken like subway trains 30 years after the wreckage, and a spirit like stars colliding.
She, is something to be treasured.
A mantle piece, if she could stay still, but the drugs won’t let her.
People, just give her a chance.
That broken, scared little girl, trapped in 33 years of Hell, give her a chance.
Some people actually are trying to turn their lives around.

Reviews

[Glen Yumang Manese]

This deep in the lines...the anguish of the life of a person can endure so much and still find a way to keep living through the struggle...just takes your breath away as a reader...there's a lot of places to quote in this verse, but what caught my eye is this one:

She tells people “My names not important, but you can call me gorgeous. Please, call me gorgeous.”

Sets in within reading this story line...all is ever wanted was just to be beautiful inside and out...and you last line give this hope:

Some people actually are trying to turn their lives around.