The Noise off 10th and Broward

The Noise off 10th and Broward
A siren wails through the fog,
Another life is lost.
_______________________________

I wrote this poem after finding out that my brother's girlfriend was in labor. She was two weeks early but still delivered a beautiful baby girl. My niece. Francesca Jaylan Adam. It made me think about all the bad happening on the day a new life was started. How many peoples' lives were ending on this day? And from there, we get the poem.

To understand the poem, we must first understand the title. 10th and Broward is where my parents live, in downtown Fort Lauderdale. They recently moved there. It's a beautiful, affluent neighborhood near an even better one. The people are mostly gay (literally and following the actual definition). It is a rather enjoyable neighborhood. Those who live in South Florida know where it is. That is why I thought it would make the best setting. It is not a place associated with crime or sirens.

In class, people hypothesized the siren being for an ambulance. I must admit that when writing I thought it to be more of a police car. The scene I saw was a drug dealer getting busted by the cops, his life being lost because the remainder of it would be spent behind bars. But it could be an ambulance that did not get to the place fast enough, or a person inches from death who couldn't be pulled back.

My rough draft had only two other lines:
A siren wails through the fog,
Another life is lost.
But who's to say the one caught
won't be found?

The lines were cut due to lack of poetic value. The poem seems more stable without them than it does with. The last line adds a glimmer of hope, something that either takes away from the death theory or makes it religious, something I definitely did not intend.

My imagery was not very strong. Kelsey Billings said that she imagined a foggy night with a man standing over a dead body, holding a bloody knife. This seems to be too Jack the Ripper for this poem. It is meant to be more modern than that, and a lot less violent. Imagery is supposed to paint a clear picture of what the author wanted you to see. It is supposed to make it so the reader sees through the author's eyes and understands perfectly. This is not the case with me. The poem is left open to interpretation so broadly that the subject is even debatable. I paint several pictures with only ten words.

The poem could certainly be improved upon. I could spend days editing it, picking more accurate words to use or making more of a backstory for the character. But that would not be true to the intent. The poem is meant to let the reader see what he or she wishes, not what I had wanted them to see. Poetry is supposed to be in the eye of the beholder so behold, world, I give you the poem of a non-poet.