A Typical Day In The Hood

Six o'clock in the morning

 

There's a cockroach crawling

 

On top of the kitchen ceiling

 

Near the new light fixture

 

Damn vacant buildings

 

On both sides of my house

 

Where the hell are they

 

Coming from?

 

Took out the trash

 

It was garbage night

 

Here in the hood

 

The damn things are crawling

 

On the sidewalk outside

 

They creep up my steps

 

Come in through the crevives

 

Of my screendoor

 

 Like they own the place

 

Time to exterminate again

 

Just a typical day

 

Here in the hood

 

Damn, here comes my feline

 

Bringing me a sewer rat

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reviews

[Su' Nacnetaf]

I've been somewhere similar, us people who endure through social, emotional, and sometimes economic troubles usually are good writers and musicians (not that I consider myself too good being any of them, but I consider you a good writer). Just another day, I recently bought a small house, which reminded me of my childhood, I'm living there right now, just because I want to, there's not even a real kitchen, I have to wash the dishes outside in the patio, and if by any chance I leave a plate, the next morning I'm sure to find more than one roach on it. But life is sometimes simpler this way, than focusing in fancy things, though my girlfriend urges me to start living again in my other house. ^^ Good writing.

[Tom Q]

Yet if you substituted trailer park for hood it would go from "gritty" to funny. The same poverty would be seen as a moral failure instead of a iconic struggle. Poor chastising poor, divide and conquer perhaps?

I like what you presented

[R J Askew]

I love this. it is marvellous. Gritty and direct. I hope never to be in the hood you describe. But the way you write gives me a glmpse of the place. The roach is a tasty hors deuve, with the best part being the satirical wimsy of the cat with the rat. You may be in a poor place but this poem shows that your skills of observation and reportage in a poetic form are most vigorous. I suppose this is small comfort though for having to put up with what you have to.

[Charles D. Moorer]

This a piece of cake compared to some thing I witness being reported in the news. But poverty often limits the vision to what is closest and most immediate. Some how you have taken the mundane and made it a pressing concern.