A
rooster
is too loud
in the city where
gunshots, fire trucks, sirens, and trains
don’t want to be wakened so early to do their jobs?
The original poem:
In the City
Airplanes are awhoosh in the sky overhead
Demolitionists gong blocks with wrecking balls
Construction crews clang chains and tools
Hotel elevators drone and ding…..all…damned….night….long
People clatter and clamor on the chaotic streets below my window
Trains thunder past on the tracks
Music blares like an unbridled banshee
Buses brake to screeching halts
Traffic trills, engines revving
Horns honk the rumblings of road rage
Fire trucks scream past flashing red flames across my wall
Gunshots pierce the silence
Police sirens wail out like victims
blue lights pulsing through the veins of city streets
somewhere between life and death
in the city
where roosters
are against the rules.
-Kim Johnson