Night Song for Street Children

On you billy gangsters urban pirates
Live & live and plunder like wild catslike good soldiers
On you hammerheads hotheads shockvictims
Trauma in your trigger-fingeredlittle pockets
Hearts throb with alley drums
Rats run &Bullet spray
Live out loud & on the lam
In borderlands & waste dumps
On moonchildren dancing in cop lights
Young & numb & hunger is illuminating
Fractured intellectuals war orphans
Young barons of nothing but corn chipsand fisticuffs
Ancient racial memories in your spray canshow downs
Looking for a soda can the ticket out a 40oz
Don’t fix on mamma/daddy’s swan divesfrom glass pipe
Searching for the safehouse your shield & cloak theinvisible music
On sweethearts display proud muscles
Eat it up with cat stroll & a shopping cart
Hush darlings Hush mother
This slight life& errant hour
No sounding line No Zion road
Onlythe helicoptoraptor overhead stalking
Strangely soothing It’s night songfor street children

—Eliet Brookes