Living on Mount Hope Street

I know streets like mountains
hope-full streets
where life is only-good

long streets with red houses
and little boys on little-wheeled
yellow bicycles

I know hopes like the continental
divide

death and rare-cooked steak.

There where Kerouac fell
in drunken stupor near a
white-awninged butcher shop

I know hope in french
and mountains of streets
covered in hopeless children

wearing maroon sweatshirts
and tossing footballs over
electric wires
over short porches
over little ever-green trees

I know streets like rivers
grinding boys toward a sea
of workish jobs languishing in
little dollared despair.

Short streets cobbled together
by alleys and gangs
by big boys in expensive leather sneakers

O Yes,
I know streets
and hope
and mountains

I know where dead is greater
than life
and the drop from the bridge
a gentle caress.

I know where life and hope crush
over granite

let us live there
in the house of only-good.