Poetry

February 12, 2019 Poetry , POETRY / FICTION

UN photo

 

By

Stefanie Bennett

 

 

 

Too Many Screams

 

 

There are too many screams in this world.

If you walk around outside yourself

You’ll get to hear what I mean…

 

The barefoot boy makes an orphanage of the streets.

The old crone in black contends with the bricks that are thrown.

The paper-seller thinks in rounds of senility.

The pawnbroker deals with his second-hand citizenship.

 

We are licensed to kill.

The fault is, we know it.

We are licensed to love.

The fault is, we ignore it.

 

The symphony is there: the orchestra plays off-key.

The book is there: it’s full of tamperings.

The scraps of justice turn the scales upside down.

The stone bird sheds a tear upon its own small shadow.

 

The scream is so high pitched…

 

It cannot understand how it created its own

Impregnable arched rainbow. It cannot understand

Its lone creation is beyond repair of beast or man.

It cannot know it screams back on itself.

 

The scream is telling you…

 

When one lives by the scream one must expect

To be cross-stitched by it. The scream asks only

For a showing of hands – a confession here and there.

An attachment of hope to a child’s kite.

 

There are too many screams…

 

If you walk around

Outside yourself

You’ll get to hear

What I mean.

 

 

 

 

 

Prospectus

 

 

O! Christ, it screamed.

Someone’s

Screaming,

Can’t you

Hear?

 

But for you,

I could…

The scream

Replied.

 

 

 

 

 

Stefanie Bennett

Stefanie Bennett, ex-blues singer & musician works with Amnesty International, Wage Peace, No Nukes: Arts Action For Peace, & Equality LGBTI. Stefanie has been nominated for Best of the Net + Pushcarts. Of mixed ancestry [Italian/Irish/Paugussett-Shawnee] she was born in Queensland, Australia.

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