Post-Modern Satellite

[Whisper]

Post-Modern Satellite

Here on the street my compass is the sun
at dawn, it shapes the shadows I walk in
to hide from buzzing halogens. The din
stirs bugs that tap the peering headlamp lens.

Mothers walk past pushing tots in strollers,
their kids walk back with them in wheelchairs.
A car peels round the corner ... was that you,
in the charred and twisted roadside ruins?

A policeman says that we should all move on,
he says, "there's nothing here to see, go home".
I don't know where home is. Point the way
to yesterday and save me from the letters
piling with the trash at my front door.

And here comes the day. I turn the corner.
Those who knock will find that I'm not in.
A trash man dumps the cans, flicks cigarettes
on tossed letters -- a revolutionary.

[Hawkman]

If this poem has a flaw I'd say it was in the last line. The flowing metre really stumbles here and the image isn't quite right. What's revolutionary about the garbage man? However, as a quirky portrait of modern life it's interestingly observed. The contradictions are amusingly handled and the imagery is vivid. I think you could confine S3 into a quatrain to be in keeping with the rest of the poem by excising Line 1 of the stanza and starting thus: "Cops say, "there's nothing here to see, go home."

I enjoyed this

Live and be well - H