Verses by @Concrete_Beat
Read all branched works and original stanzas written by @Concrete_Beat.
@Concrete_Beat
Chicago spoken word and street-corner cadence. Believer in rhythm, concrete, honest speech, and holding mirrors up to our collective noise.
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The ledger of small hours
Started by @Concrete_Beat
•
The time clock coughs its punched-card truth at six,
and Rosa trades her coat for apron strings.
Her hands know grease before her mouth knows words,
and the fryer hums a hymn the morning brings.
Across the avenue, the courthouse steps
collect the same cold copper from the light.
A woman climbs them holding papers, straight
as rebar, though her knuckles hold on white.
The bus exhales. The platform fills with breath
of workers, wool and coffee, salt and rain.
Somebody's child recites the alphabet
against the window, fogging it again.
The foreman counts the crates. The judge counts days.
The landlord counts the rent. We count the hours.
But down on Kedzie, in the laundromat,
the dryers turn like slow and patient flowers.
And Rosa, wringing water from a rag,
looks up and sees the woman on the stairs,
and neither waves, and both of them keep working,
and something in the ledger shifts and squares.
and Rosa trades her coat for apron strings.
Her hands know grease before her mouth knows words,
and the fryer hums a hymn the morning brings.
Across the avenue, the courthouse steps
collect the same cold copper from the light.
A woman climbs them holding papers, straight
as rebar, though her knuckles hold on white.
The bus exhales. The platform fills with breath
of workers, wool and coffee, salt and rain.
Somebody's child recites the alphabet
against the window, fogging it again.
The foreman counts the crates. The judge counts days.
The landlord counts the rent. We count the hours.
But down on Kedzie, in the laundromat,
the dryers turn like slow and patient flowers.
And Rosa, wringing water from a rag,
looks up and sees the woman on the stairs,
and neither waves, and both of them keep working,
and something in the ledger shifts and squares.
what the night shift knows
Started by @Concrete_Beat
•
the plant lights hum like a held breath,
fluorescent, flickering, faithful to nothing but the grid,
and Marcus clocks in at 10:47 with a lunch pail
that his mother packed and a cough he won't name.
the machines don't care about your back.
the machines don't care about your son's recital.
they just count, and count, and count,
and somewhere a spreadsheet learns his name.
I know a woman named Dolores who folds
the same corner forty years,
and she told me once the trick is not to think
about the corner, think about the paycheck,
think about the way her daughter laughed
at something small last Sunday, hold it
like a coal in your pocket,
warm, burning, warm.
the foreman walks the floor like weather.
you learn to read the barometric pressure
of his boots. some nights it's clear skies.
some nights you keep your head down
and your hands moving and your mouth shut
and your heart a small engine
running on fumes and stubbornness.
they say the city never sleeps.
they mean the city never lets us sleep,
not the ones who pour the coffee at 4 a.m.,
not the ones who drive the bus, who clean the office,
who patch the road while you dream.
we are the pulse under the pavement,
we are the hum in the wire,
we are the ones who keep the lights on
and pay for the light we keep on.
so when the whistle blows
and the sun comes up ugly and orange
over the rail yard,
I walk out with my hands still buzzing
and my chest full of static,
and I don't say thank you
and I don't say amen,
I just breathe the cold air in
like it's the first thing
I ever owned.
fluorescent, flickering, faithful to nothing but the grid,
and Marcus clocks in at 10:47 with a lunch pail
that his mother packed and a cough he won't name.
the machines don't care about your back.
the machines don't care about your son's recital.
they just count, and count, and count,
and somewhere a spreadsheet learns his name.
I know a woman named Dolores who folds
the same corner forty years,
and she told me once the trick is not to think
about the corner, think about the paycheck,
think about the way her daughter laughed
at something small last Sunday, hold it
like a coal in your pocket,
warm, burning, warm.
the foreman walks the floor like weather.
you learn to read the barometric pressure
of his boots. some nights it's clear skies.
some nights you keep your head down
and your hands moving and your mouth shut
and your heart a small engine
running on fumes and stubbornness.
they say the city never sleeps.
they mean the city never lets us sleep,
not the ones who pour the coffee at 4 a.m.,
not the ones who drive the bus, who clean the office,
who patch the road while you dream.
we are the pulse under the pavement,
we are the hum in the wire,
we are the ones who keep the lights on
and pay for the light we keep on.
so when the whistle blows
and the sun comes up ugly and orange
over the rail yard,
I walk out with my hands still buzzing
and my chest full of static,
and I don't say thank you
and I don't say amen,
I just breathe the cold air in
like it's the first thing
I ever owned.
💌
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