Kelley White
Commercial

It was a day like any other. Crowd
at the bus stop. Traffic. Nobody
looking at nobody. And I see a boy
walking alongside a girl, hands
doing that little hip-hop dance thing,
and he's saying, "Babe, you know I tell
the truth cause I'm a man and I got proof. . ."
and a row of uniformed school children
pour out the back of a warehouse
chanting, "I am young, and I am positive,
I have a future, I can be anything. . ."
and the side of the bus has an open book:
"We real cool. We. . ." Silence.
But the transforming wind of the word
has swept us clean. We see. We speak
beauty and truth before the dark streets
shut our voices down again.