Poetry: The Streets
April 14, 2020 – Los Angeles: The latest Artists For A Better World International “Poetry of the Month” selection features work from Millicent Segwane of Guateng, South Africa.
The Streets
The streets that I walk… Doesn’t that sound so unoriginal? Which great artist has not yet said those words?
The streets of a place that I call home remind me of a place that I call hell, wouldn’t you at least walk the streets with me?
They are filled with languages that not even I can understand and not even Google can translate.
Couldn’t you at least walk the streets with me?
The dogs bark at the homeless man in search for food, with rags on his body… What could he possibly offer?
The dogs bark at the owner but with such a selfish owner that only uses the dogs as security instead of family…What could he possibly offer?
The candle is lit for the peasant’s daughter at midnight for she has a future to build but with no-one to help her achieve …What could she possibly gain?
The Boer glare at us with looks, because they wonder how apartheid ended for the better yet our brothers and sisters are walking these streets in no orderly manner.
I see this 24/7, couldn’t you at least walk the streets with me? Do you not want to see?
Where the rats are as big as the balls of a boy who claims to be a man,
where textbooks have lost their sole purpose and girls have lost their dreams all in the name of a ‘one night stand’
The streets that are filled with boys with dreams but as they get older they become men with nothing but an ego.
YES! These are the streets.
Where education is nothing but a drag, where drugs have become a need, where impressing people is a form of communication.
Why wouldn’t you walk these streets with me?
Is it because your brother is at the corner selling dope? Is it because your sister has given up all hope? Is it because you have disappointed those that stay unrested at their graves?
Why wouldn’t you dream! Do you not want to drive through these streets? Do you not want to have the clothes? Cars and money?
Imagine me! Believe me! In the streets filled with nothing but samples I choose to be an EXAMPLE.
I choose to be the VOICE, some nights I felt like I had it but it isn’t just dreams, it’s just a plan, a plan, a plan do not let these corners kill you, for I want you to see.
How these streets can never turn a girl into a wife, how these boys going in raw now they are stuck with her for life.
Do you not want to witness this? Where crime has found its home in the streets that mothers send their kids to play,
where death has found its victims
where success can no longer live, and failure has won the war and people laze around because the street is all that they have ever known
I am not trying to say or degrade certain areas, I want you to not listen to me but walk these streets with me and reach a decision
But why wouldn’t you walk these streets with me?
A school not open, a teacher not paid yet I promise you these streets come with lessons learnt.
by Millicent Segwane of Guateng, South Africa.
Copyright © By Millicent Segwane. All Rights Reserved.