Street Sights is looking for more people to join the Staff. We are all volunteers, and the work we do is from the heart. We need reporters, writers, photographers and researchers. If you are interested, come to one of our meetings at the George Hunt Center, 121 Mathewson Street in Downtown Providence every Saturday at 3pm or Email us at: streetsights@gmail.com
The 2011 Poetry Contest Winners:
THE INVISIBLE MAN
By Jeff Britto
Pain is all I’ve ever known!
It’s been said “You reap what you sow”.
But I’ve never harmed anyone. Not a living soul.
So, I reap the whirlwind,
living the life I was given
with no expectation that somewhere there’s a heaven.
Turning down the avenue with cold rain on my face,
my mind searches back to a better place
as I pray that God will give me his grace.
I’m just a faceless apparition,
taking up space and time,
with its shoes soaking wet
and soles thin as a dime.
I wish it were different
but this is my lot;
facing the reality that
the streets are all I’ve got.
THE HOMELESS
By Jeff Britto
We see them every day.
Look at them with disgust and dismay
and call our children in from play.
They are of every ethnicity and background,
found in every city and every town.
The numbers of them surely do astound.
Their faces are gaunt and stressed.
They’re always disheveled and unkempt.
Their situations are desperate and stark as they make
their homes in our parks and doorways,
or in a huddled mass
in alleyways amongst rats and trash.
Others hide away under highway ramps.
Those we’ve labeled bums, derelicts, and tramps.
When will come the day when we take stock of ourselves and say,
Homelessness won’t be solved unless we all get involved?
Perhaps we should concentrate less on self and personal vanity
by questioning our common decency and our humanity.
Let’s all look a little deeper, because we really and truly are
our brother’s keeper.
Homeless
(A home without love)
By David Frankina
No matter the home
Where I may reside
The emptiness will be
Both around and inside
No feelings, nor love
Will ever be found
For there’ll never be
Any loving family around
It’s a place where
All my yesterday’s die
Where dreams and hopes
Bring tears and cries
Where all that’s past
Can overwhelm me
Where what could’ve been
Will always torment me
No longer a father,
Only an empty shell
Abandoned in a place
That’s a living hell
They call it living
But it’s ongoing pain
A place that forever
Where I will remain
For me yesterday’s certainties
Have become today’s doubts
Causing feelings of despair
That settles all about
I fear and dread
What tomorrow might bring
More of that which
Will never be changing
So much is unknown
About who I am
My life has flowed
Like water over a dam
All of its goodness
Now quietly streams away
Nobody has diverted it
To flow their way
Forgotten in their mind
Bled from their heart
Only in their memory
Am I still part
Why can’t the family
Who’s from my seed
Give love and forgiveness
That I desperately need
A Poet
By David Frankina
A poet is born with heart and soul,
To express his feelings is his lifetime goal.
Life is his subject, his reason to be,
He puts into words what others can’t see.
The poems he writes are from his heart,
True poetry is words that your emotions start.
Your emotions will feel, your mind will dwell,
On what he’s written, what his poems tell.
He feels the world, while others only sense,
Everything he writes is profound and intense.
The world is alive, everything has a life,
He describes life’s beauty and also its strife.
But inside his heart each written word pains,
Tearing apart his essence till ‘til no life remains. ^^^
His words are emotions, each line he’ll feel
Every poem is alive, to him it’s real.
A poet is nothing ‘til till he doesn’t exist ^^^
Then what he’s written, his readers can’t resist.
His words come alive only when he’s dead,
Death is an emphasizer assuring he’ll be read.
If someone’s a poet then he must die,
To prove his words were not a lie.
Words are his lifeblood, thus his final cost,
His word’s gain immortality, his life is lost.
The Pains of Darkness
By Regina Watkins
AMBER LIGHT, FADING, DYING
DARKNESS, ENCOMPASSING, CONSUMING
VOICES, UNTRUTHFUL, LYING
FEAR, UNCERTAINTY LOOMING.
SLEEPLESS NIGHT, TOO WELL KNOWN
NIGHTMARISH HORRORS ON NIGHTS OF FITFUL SLEEP
PEACEFUL DREAMS FAR AWAY HAVE FLOWN
ONLY DESPAIR FOLLOWS, FOREVER DEEP.
PACING, FRIGHTENED, CRAVING DAWN
WISHING AWAY THE AWFUL VOICES.
KNOWING NOT WHERE HOPE HAS GONE
AND HAVING NO MORE CHOICES.
BLACK GIVES WAY TO GRAY
THE VOICES DRIFT AFAR
THE SUN GIVES PROMISE OF A NEW DAY
AND ERASES EACH AND EVERY SCAR.
BUT SOON THE LIGHT BEGINS TO FADE
GIVING WAY TO DARKNESS ONCE MORE.
AGAIN SHE MUST LIE UPON THE BED SHE MADE
AND CRY HER PAIN AS BEFORE.
On The Edge of Mt. Pleasant
By Dean Martineau
Waiting for the Mexican cook
Antonio
In front of the foreclosed house
On the edge of Mt. Pleasant
The white-winged thrushes
Chasing each other
through wire chain link fences
Junk trees
a “birds and the bees” reality show
The jumbled street back-dropped with thumping SUV’s
The kids even here in this neighborhood ride skateboards;
Dogs bark incessantly…
The Whippoorwill Whippoorwills
And Robins and Grackles grackle
A Wisteria some dead Italian immigrant planted in 1952
Wafts its heady Purple musk
The satellite TV truck
is parked sideways
Across the busted driveway
In front of the vinyl sided tenement that has
5 satellite dishes along its edge
Empty cases of
Corona and long neck Budweiser
The rims of each
Japanese vehicle glisten
In the afterglow
of late afternoon sunlight
The twisted metal Venetian blinds
On the third floor attic windows
Seem sad like half a smile
on Saturday night
Someone is blowing a horn
Someone else is sitting
on a peeling porch
Everyone is telling me
all they want is a job
“This country no good no more…
No jobs no more…”
I am the sore thumb
in this neighborhood
I am waiting for the Mexican
Antonio
