Back Alley's Poem

Back Alleys Poem

by Mary Margaret Park

back alleys

like dirty secrets

hidden from view

rolled in burnt coal

and Blackened soot

the narrows

where backwater sheds

don tar paper roofs

and depression era houses

grow skeletal with age

the gallows

shadowed

in poverty and rage

city canals

the water’s edge

a grey soup of wet newspaper

tangled with rusted steel

and shattered glass

a wasteland of broken promises

and forgotten memories

like beggars

on a city street

boarded up houses and vacant lots

sputter and pause into industrial districts

here, rail yards reign in a grey rage

littered with boxcars

exclaiming, R.I.P. Mikey

Cassie’s Carl

dope sick sucks

societies cast offs

culture shocked casualties

their voices silenced by another man’s rage

The hallows

corridors into the past