Tuesday, May 12, 2009

There Is No Tomorrow ©©

Walking down these old streets, I remember
My eyes search for faces in all the familiar places
People I used to know and can never forget
Yet nothing is as it used to be

The places remain the same
But the faces have changed
The laughter has turned to silence
Those that remain are but specters lost in the cracks of my mind

On a bench I spy an old man
Begging for change for food or one last fix to set him free
Next to him the ghost of a boy sits lost in his thoughts
Dreaming of the future, a tomorrow

In the alley a woman wrapped in bloodstained rags
Swims in a metal world clinging onto her despair
While the little girl inside weeps
Weeps for what never was, what could have been

I stand in the shadows and watch
The drones walk past what they don’t want to see
Past what once was my home
Past the ghosts of my life

Every corner has a story
Every tear was a dream
Every dream was hope of escape
A plot for some, the lucky ones

Once we greeted the world with a song
Walked the streets without a care
Now the melody has soured
As the silence swallows up the past

The warrior has become the beggar
The mother, a rat to furrow among the waste
While their children walk by among the other drones
Lost among the humming of the machine

Only the glow of my cigarette remains the same
While the rest fades to gray
Until the wind takes away the trailing smoke
And only the ashes remain with nothing to say

Walker

4 comments:

Opaque said...

"The places remain the same
But the faces have changed"

Oh, I can so relate to this one Walker. Nicely written!!!

Woman in a Window said...

Walker, I don't think it's a bad thing at all that we are coming from two strangely foreign places.

For me the places have changed but the faces are the same. I find I just have to uncover them. They're buried under fat and years. It's so surreal, really.

Thanks for your perspective.

Shadow said...

familiar places, now unrecognisable... erode by time and lack of love

Dotm said...

Meeting younger ones and remembering their faces and sometimes not their names- that, I hate the worst.
Everything keeps changing, the old neighborhood has been replaced by younger people ( few of us older ones left), trees replaced by homes. Woods animals ( squirrels, chipmunks, skunks,etc.) hanging in your back yard - the small woods gone that used to live in.
Good post, but so are your other posts.