# June Challenge: "Mean Streets"



## Chesters Daughter (Jun 1, 2018)

*AS PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED, IF YOU ENTER THE CHALLENGE, YOU MUST CAST AT LEAST ONE VOTE IN THE POLL. FAILURE TO COMPLY WILL RESULT IN YOUR ENTRY BEING DISQUALIFIED.

*The prompt for this month's challenge, as chosen by moi is: *Mean Streets

*You are free to interpret the prompt in any way you wish, though of course, site rules apply. If you are unsure of the challenge rules please read the 'stickies' at the top of the board. *Please note that all entries* *are eligible to receive critique in the voting thread.* 

*The inclusion of explanatory text or links of any kind within an entrant's challenge entry is prohibited and will be immediately removed upon discovery. As always, only one entry per member is permitted.

*As previously announced, anonymous entries have been abolished, therefore, entrants must post their own entries in this thread, or if you desire to protect first rights, please post your entry in the *secure** thread*, and then post a link to it here in the public thread. *Failure to do so runs the risk of your entry being disqualifie**d*, so if you require assistance with the task, please PM *me*, and I will gladly help you.

If your entry contains strong language or mature content, *please include a disclaimer in your title.

*Kindly make sure your entry is properly formatted and error free before you submit. You have a* TEN MINUTE GRACE PERIOD* to edit your piece, but anything edited after that will likely see your entry excluded from the challenge. 
*
Do not post comments in this thread. Any discussion related to the challenge can take place in the Bards' Bistro. 

Everyone may now use the "Like" function whenever they so choose.



This challenge will close on the 15th of June at 7pm EST.*


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## Chesters Daughter (Jun 2, 2018)

*Baby Haunts Her Corner (Adult Content)*

Baby sports more prints
than bagged forties 
passed 'round her corner.
Eyes never to see twenty,
reflect a century's
worth of torture.

Mater shared her habit
with busty preteen 
in threadbare bra,
now every venous road
is run ragged
by spawned track star.

Her cheeks peek
from beneath 
a tiny denim tease,
when you wanna work,
advertising captures sleaze.
Daddy takes his share;
pink limo must be prime.
Gotta have a guardian
to keep the tricks in line.

Mama's a magician
who makes stuff disappear,
bags, bucks, and self esteem
vanish when she's near
"Can't sell my shriveled prune,
but you're still nice and ripe,
best pass that pipe on over
cuz it was me who gave you life."

Spoonfuls of sugar
amply sweeten the pot,
those lovely little nods
are all poor Baby’s got.
Despite stiletto wobble,
she's always in the game,
palming chips 
from countless hands
'fore dawn dents
dark's bruised remains.

Ghost leans upon a lamppost,
glittery orbs drooping closed
slurring a seductive price list
with her pretty ass exposed,
perceiving the scent of pig
through a septum deprived nose.

Illuminated aluminum
declares Times Square,
but that's just for the tourists,
the walking dead are well aware
a blurred peer at the backside
bares Satan's Thoroughfare;

an avenue of excess
worn down to cobblestone,
sprinkled with spent syringes
and powdered babies' bones.


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## aj47 (Jun 3, 2018)

abandoned ... unloved
she died alone on the street
a feline speed bump​


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## Cugoano (Jun 6, 2018)

https://www.writingforums.com/threa...Streets-quot?p=2164968&viewfull=1#post2164968


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## Gumby (Jun 6, 2018)

*Lil’ Cowboy*

He rode the white horse 
in mama’s womb,
she bucked him out 
on a crack house floor.

  Jitter baby, jitter,
shake, sweat,
crusty vomit, 
cardboard bassinet.

  He can’t sit still for Gramma’s hugs;
she’s raisin’ him to be a man
not no gangsta thug,
sees him play in the street
  on his white stick horse,
shoot finger guns at passing cars.

  She prays baby, prays,
shakes and sweats;
this child won’t rest in peace
in no cardboard bassinet.


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## midnightpoet (Jun 6, 2018)

Hatcher Street

Old black men sit in empty chairs,
their brown eyes watching johnson grass
bleeding from sidewalk wounds
and used car lots that sprout
like weeds, littered with broken glass
and tattered memories.

Behind boarded windows
in crack house rooms
they breath in death
through toothless grins

while streetwise youth
play deadly games
that lead but to graveyards
full of brown eyes
that finally escaped
from Hatcher Street.


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## Firemajic (Jun 7, 2018)

*Where The Sparrows Sing at Night*

_*Try to fly little Sparrow!
leave your white trash nest 
rise above the mean streets
that wait to feast lustfully 
on your innocent hollow bones
they will devour your precious song
 force you to spread your
 innocent wings 

Hey little Sparrow
spread your dirty wings
and sing for your next meal
mere crumbs dropped from the pockets
of those who use you
abuse you

Where will you sleep tonight
the dark is full of demons with sharp objects
waiting in shadows to silence your song
and they will slice your small wings so you 
can't fly
 don't even try

Close your eyes weary Sparrow
there are no more tomorrows
don't cry
sing your last sad song
alone
in the dark with a needle in your dirty veins
tonight... you will fly so high

Tomorrow the gutter will be your grave...





*_


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## H.Brown (Jun 7, 2018)

*Mean streets of memory.*

Mean streets of memory.

I walk alone down memory lane,
treading twisted streets within,
faking smiles for hidden pain,
 inside my hurts still cling
to a fractured mind,
 I hide behind!​


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## Darkkin (Jun 7, 2018)

*Roads to Gone Away Places*

Roads to Gone Away Places


The call from broken pavements, a countenance pocked,
voices raised, mostly anger and annoyance, but for some,
the language is different, those voices of fear and shock.

Mean streets, a marvel of modernity hopelessly immured,
in the minds, the habits and habitats of expected squalor—
a physical incarnation marooned, a consciousness inured.

Those moribund remnants of Rexy, the glass-boned rabbit,
a body trapped in a mire, wherein horrific is now mundane.
Mean streets—can they lead away from rituals, the habits?

Glass to sand, innards gone cold, Rexy of Shattered Bone,
a bright mind entrenched in the labyrinth of Mean Streets,
but what are these streets if not pathways carved in stone.

Think, Rabbit, think, they are streets, mean is in the mind.
Goddamn it, Rexy!  An ember banked, potential slumbers—
deep in dunes of dream sand, in a smile, simple and kind.

Streets and the minds they contain, they are just a habit—
mean, that easy, ignorant habitual frame of small minds.
So dream on Rexy—follow mad Carroll’s White Rabbit.

Shelter in place, in stillness and silence, patient as sand,
even as a finger traces a line in the bones of glass; think.
Break the habit, ignite the mind, fire for bones to stand.  

Strength rests in the bones, even those turned to stone—
with nothing but skin and bones, just a place to start—
 a journey to be undertaken by a mind that grit honed.

Mean streets, a habitat of sneering stone, was a habit
of a frail, glass boned body, Rexy who should not be.
Mind ablaze, bones of sand vitrified—Glass Rabbit.

Toes on mean streets, small minds set in brittle stone.
Stand Rabbit—run mean streets to Places Gone Away.
Foundations laid down, forged in supple, living bone.

Down the rabbit hole, just old streets left far behind.


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## Phil Istine (Jun 8, 2018)

[veterans' day]


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## TuesdayEve (Jun 13, 2018)

The Street With No Name

Why you act that way
Why you be so cold
turn a good thing bad
yea, ya kill for gold
don’t get you’re way
don’t care whose hurt
gonna get your props
mama’s bloody skirt

Mother father’s fear
babies on the steps
poppin’ pills shootin’ up 
bangin’ at it’s best
gotta be so tough
hot night young dead
gotta be so cold
copper to her head

Everyone dies
two years old
shot in his bed
a story untold
no blame on you
for innocent cries
no blame on you
for brotherly ties

You think you’re a winner
You think you’re smart
You think you’re a player
You got no heart
black, white or purple
You don’t care
collateral damage
your street warfare

You love to score
You hate to lose
You just plain mean
You just can’t choose
random plays your maiming game
eighth grade honors 
not in a gang

Cut your ties 
cut your life
money your motive
power your knife
devoured by demons 
man’s fear and hate
bannish love’s grace
render hell’s gate


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## Outsider (Jun 15, 2018)

*The Mean*

https://www.writingforums.com/threa...-quot-Mean-Streets-quot?p=2166430#post2166430


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## ned (Jun 15, 2018)

*An ugly lovely town*

.
See beyond, the pristine precinct
to the not so recent, not so clean
where men are gleaned from near history
like a widow's memory, smeared with tears.


Men with faces steeped in toil
beneath the soil ripped at the seams
recompenced by dreams and lies
with only the pennies upon their eyes to spend.


And the men from the shadows of the seven hills
where heaven dared not dwell
in furnaces from hell, dyed and cast
from the past to walk the dark.


And the men of stone who swung a sledge
drove a wedge to slate the grey
then up away toward the moored
where stevedores grasped hooks to grapple.


And the men chappeled in blessed company
in harmony with the bell ringing
softly singing of hell and bones
in Welsh-wood-tones 'Saspan Bach'

From upon the seven hills, look down
to the kindly mean streets of this ugly lovely town.


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## writersblock (Jun 15, 2018)

*Despair
*

Shrines of progress cast long shadows;
as they soar to the heavens,
oblivious to the squalor at their feet.
Their denizens look down on him
with their noses turned.

He understands.

But why would he bother
to clean up his corner?
His little filthy fiefdom.

He’s heard of those that made it;
They never found their way back.
Maybe they lost their way,
Or they never cared to look back.

Maybe it’s all just a myth.
Like the one about the rose
that made it through the concrete.

Just like all his heros,
blighted by the streets that made him.
Their words could have saved him,
but were used to corrupt his kin;
when all the voices of justice
faded into begging whispers.

He reckons there is more to life,
away from this decay.
But his nascent wings were clipped,
long before he could fly.​


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## Chesters Daughter (Jun 15, 2018)

This challenge is now closed.


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