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2 Poems by Derek Thomas Dew

by Derek Thomas Dew from USA

Up and Scatter

The couple at the end of the headlights

has had who they’ve made taken away

after only a few words spoken in the open air

between them and the mountains that hide the city

where the newly completed school will open its halls

and one child will be confused with another

until so little is known about each that you’d only guess

at the kind of person being developed year after year 

someplace else where the songs are only 

that there was once a song that kept people from guessing 

when in the middle of the night soaked in sweat 

they’d wake to darkness sure of nothing 

except that they wished they’d waited why did they not

wait and wait at the end of the headlights.

 

Eric Garner

The boy who looked unlike the other boys

was given a name that sounded like the names of the other boys

but would not be able to make others remember it 

because he wouldn’t be seen as a boy for as long as the others

whose names would stay with them into manhood 

as they remembered less and less about being boys

until they no longer recognized the names of anyone,

even when the unlike boy who had also reached manhood 

said his, out loud, on a city street to them so they’d know he’d been a boy

as well, and so was now a man like them and appeared that way

to all who watched as they forced his last breath from his body

though the appearance was not enough to halt the traffic

on the city street where he lay while his name found him again

and you found his name.

Page created on 3/19/2022 6:40:59 PM

Last edited 3/21/2022 12:54:06 AM

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