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
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