Poem of the Week: 9/30/07

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heinzs
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Poem of the Week: 9/30/07

Post by heinzs » Mon Oct 01, 2007 9:39 pm

Winner: Poem of the Week: September 30, 2007
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A Three Letter Word
by KayRayLee

I was only six
standing in a rat filled alley,
as my uncle listens
to my mother crying.

"He is sick..."She tells me.."
He does look yellow under
neon lights. I wonder if I will
turn yellow, too.

The alley smells like my cat; who
crawled under the porch and died
last year. We didn't find him for
a week.

I was afraid. I didn't want to be here.
The church people said, .."This alley was hell."
The preacher said..."We were all going there."
We were the first ones here, I wondered
when the preacher would arrive?

My uncle pulled a cord tight above the elbow bend.
His vein grew very large. I turned away. I was afraid
his arm would fall apart.

"This is death; my mother would always say."

It is hard to remember that alley. I do remember the
smell. Life eats childhood daily, memories turning to fog.
That has been years, ago. My mother still looks at
his picture and crys. They were twins. They both looked
just alike.

I would like to have known my uncle. The drugs
captured his soul in Nam. They sent back his
body in a pit of darkness with a medal pinned
to his shirt.

The preacher was wrong about the alley.
Hell is a place where children, women and men
are bleeding on the ground, where death is all around.
It could be anyplace on earth, it is a three
letter word, simple to spell, impossible to understand.

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An' it harm none, do what ye will. Blessed Be.
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