Three Poems from Richard Schnap

Buskers

A woman with a worn skirt
Conjures longing from a violin
Outside of a supermarket

A boy with a battered guitar
Strums adolescent sorrows
In front of a coffeehouse

A man sings blue ballads
Accompanied by a bruised keyboard
On a sidewalk by a bus stop

A girl whose lonesome voice
Fights against the noise of traffic
At a corner near a drug store

And each one places a container
A cup, a box, an old can
To collect the coins of strangers

That yield pennies and nickels
But sometimes only raindrops
Falling from a dark grey sky



On the Wings of Words

The stories we embrace
Are often the ones
Absent from our own lives

A wife who devours
Romantic novels
As her husband shares other beds

A boy who studies
Tales of other worlds
As his father makes his mother scream

A man who collects
Biographies of heroes
As he cowers every time the phone rings

And then there are those
Who write their own
As if then they could conquer fate

And maybe leave
Something behind
To ease someone else's burden



Monuments

There are engraves names
Of once revered thinkers
Their philosophies belonging
To a long-forgotten past

And the humble chapel
For a beloved songwriter
Whose soul-stirring melodies
Only the dead still croon

And the school dedicated
To a man that gave his life
For children that now always
Seem to mispronounce his name

And a circle of candles
For an accident victim
That flicker for a moment
Till the wind snuffs them out

Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  A two-time Best of the Net Nominee, his poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally, and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.  His debut chapbook, A Wind From Nowhere, is available from Flutter Press.