There are stories everyday
Laid on the pavement grey,
The streets people wonder
Tell tales of their sonders.

Monsters and mobsters.

A mother limps to the bank.
She’s ragged and rank
For her desperate fixation’s
To pay for her child’s education.

Meanwhile,

Yellow shirts are gathered at a square
To form a protest there
Over a country gone sinister;
With its servants and ministers.

Hold up, let’s take a quick intermission
As we bring you this breaking news transmission.
The citizens are now actually interested
In the sum’ and sum’ billion.

Then again, how do you know the truth’s not spun?
Well, you best avoid the articles certified as MO1s.

So it goes,
History shows,
That everybody knows.

The cops pulled in fast
To unleash the gas.
An elderly the casualty
Once the clouds passed.

But did you know?

His grandson’s caught walking
Amongst a crowd gawking.
For they couldn’t stand
The sight of a man and another man

Hand-in-hand.

“I’m just trying to be me!”
He cries against the litanies
Of religious consultation
Held, strangely, at a police station.

People clock in at nine,
And go home at six.

It’s no wonder everybody’s tired.
Young adults have their brains wired.
A hollow treat,
Are the only schemes aspired
Now that they have dire ends to meet.

I mean,
Isn’t it a fright
Knowing love will be made tonight
Based on a super-like
Or a swipe right?

“That’s because big dreams are dead,”
My old neighbours once said.
“Our daughter wants to feel alive,
But all we want is for her to survive.”

So they force her to marry
Some rich guy named Larry.
But, sadly, Larry deals her in bruises.
Once a victim, now a culprit
Of frequent abuses.

I asked myself what can I do?

This madness that goes unchecked
Draws a noose on all of our necks.
And it really makes me wonder…
As I go on my routine walk,
Trading poetry
For some spare change on my block.

Cover image by Christian Chen on Unsplash