Word on the Street is

Preacher guy on the street,
damned huckster
speaking on behalf of
omnipotence; strange, isn’t it?
goddamn his hollow words
and plastic biblical images
the flowers of his vocabulary
bear no fruit

Still, they listen,
crowded around his soapbox pulpit,
to his sermon on the concrete.
They shiver and coo
as he summons threats of retribution
from the mythos of his paycheck,
worth less than the lumber on
Jesus’ shoulders, or the
pebbles in his sandals.

Until preacher guy treads asphalt
on naked feet and grizzled rags
when he finally stops telling me
I’m wrong,
once he stops picking his teeth
with thorns from his lord’s crown,
only then will I listen with the crowd.

But today
I smirk and undress his words
strip them naked of their chilling
connotations,
as if to bottle the wind I
freshly picked from the curves of his sails
and release it—
in hopes that the breeze
carries away the fiction
from his

Mind,
Tongue,
and Ego.

By Dave Santone

Biography:

My name is Dave Santone; I’m a 30-year-old aspiring writer/psychology student hailing from Philadelphia, PA. I’ve spent my whole life in this city and my work mostly reflects the personal and social struggles of living in a major urban area, with a specific focus on how city life affects the human condition. I use my work to highlight urban issues such as poverty, gentrification and classism, and often delve into psychological pitfalls such as depersonalization and solitude.