City sounds of the departed
Hear the roar of 1000 dead souls as they walk among us in the streets,
their pleas for help and acknowledgment being drowned out by car horns, loud music and basketballs hitting the concrete,
they are no longer noticed.
Hear the whisper of the departed as you walk around with your earbuds on,
not able to comprehend the words over the sounds of rap.
Feel as someone is looking at you or sworn they called your name,
when it is the 1000 dead souls yelling in unison.
Tug on the shirt when nobody is around thinking what the fuck just happened?
You brush it off as if it was nothing,
with another attempt of attention down the drain.
Waking up with cold sweats,
from dreams of deceased loved ones and feeling a presence among you,
they beg for acknowledgment.
Listen close to the whispers of the bleak hope instead of the car horns,
can you hear the pleas for help over the loud music?
Were you listening when your ancestors asked for your attention while you were playing ball?
Next time, turn down the music and listen real close,
and maybe you might be able to hear the departed over the sounds of the city.
Comments
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jwiener
One question that can never be truly answered, is "what happens to us when we die?" This question cannot be answered by anyone alive, because they have not yet eperienced this. In your poem, you do an excellent job of pondering the answer to this question, and you decide that no one ever truly leaves us, because they are always all around, craving for our attention, and sometimes performing ghost-like actions. As poets, one of our purposes is to create questions and try to answer them through our poetry, and that is exactly what this poem does.