Streets

There was something about them. The way they felt, their smell. They turned the soles of shoes black. They were always full, even if they were completely empty. They gained their soul from love, hate, passion, opportunity, blood, spit, sadness, anger and joy. It all bled together to forge a layer of grime that kept anyone from truly being able to know their soul.

Their touch was unforgiving. It was always rough and scolding. And even though they rejected all those who fell to them, countless minds flocked to adore them, to be welcomed and to walk them in glory.

Only those who lived on the streets came close enough to know them. They became blackened and stained like the streets, they smelled like the streets. Their skin became rough and pocked like the asphalt. They had so much in common. And still the streets would never reciprocate, they remained an indifferent host even to those who had nothing left but a place on the streets.

And every day they died there. The streets claiming their souls, offering their bodies little more than a cold, hard slab to the once warm flesh which itself was slowly morphing and becoming cold and hard. Only in lifelessness could they finally become one.

© 2012 Matt Cunningham

My Review

Would you like to review this Poem?
Login | Register

Featured Review

JGIII

I like this one best. It seems you have a much more emotional connection to this one. I liked that you decided to go with formatting it like a story rather than in couplets or some other poetry convention. Makes it seem like a story within a poem, maybe a saga by a skald...but not in couplets.
Their was not forgiving - did you mean to say there was no forgiving; they were not forgiving?

Their skin became rough and pocketed like the asphalt. - Did you mean pocked like the asphalt?
Best line in my opinion: They gained their soul from love, hate, passion, opportunity, blood, spit, sadness, anger and joy.