Bronx Series: Reaper Man

Part of a series of social commentary poems set in the Bronx, NY

 

Bronx Series:

 

Reaper Man – (Version 1)

 

Is the reaper really grim

As he makes his rounds today

Or does he merely grin

And bear a thousand souls away?

 

An argument... a bullet flies

Through crowded summer streets

A passerby, not known to them

Bleeds death at someone’s feet

 

There’s no real cause, no reasoned “why”

Yet death’s not unexpected

For reaper rakes them down his chute

His quota unaffected

 

By slightest pangs of conscience, no

Nor children choked on mother’s blood

So long as no one’s watching close

Death’s easy in the ‘hood.

 

Bronx Series:

 

Reaper Man – (Version 2)

 

Is the reaper really grim

As he make his rounds today

Or does he merely grin

And bear a thousand souls away?

 

Well as for me, I couldn’t see

Myself a grinning fool

While round me fly some thousand lives

Their inner heat forever cooled

 

But reaper, he can’t truly grin

At least not when he works

And being grim’s as foreign to him

As tilling fertile earth

 

No, reaper man cares not a whit

‘bout reaping messy lives

just worries ‘bout his messy home

three angry kids, his second wife.

Author's Note

Which version do you like best, or are they both too heavy handed?

Reviews

[Krystal Waters]

Wow, the person trying to hold it all together and yet only effects very little because what is around him makes the world he is walking through. The killers, the pimps, the dope dealers, they are taking lives as the mothers cry. Deep and to the point. You saw the worst in people which makes you conscience of what is also the best in them. So many see only what is in front of them and nothing more. Their concern is for that day, work, kids and family yet they do not even realize all around them is another world. Really this piece gets down to the very soul of mankind.

Krystal