Homeless? He disagrees. He has his own kind of home.
After spinning a quarter
of chance:
decapitation of the
Georgia Moon bottle
yummious numbious.
Quickly gone.
I throw the empty
down a rain gutter,
not the streets
where we crawl.
No winkle time alas,
spewing sewage
in a street too dark
for needing glasses.
My shoes.
Dammit, my SHOES!
A crappy pair,
but they’re all I’ve got.
A deep fried smell
is coming from a vent
opposite to the dumpster,
as usual.
I imagine chicken
breaded oh so nicely
in my alley.
I’m not homeless;
my flat box pops up
and has curtained openings,
it’s my palace.
I don’t intend to take on
a shopping cart,
that means you’ll never get out.
And I’m getting out.
I’m between jobs,
but I’ll get back in the game.
A few more dollars
and I can buy new clothes…
new kicks…and whatever
they put in those fry vats.
For now, I can dive into refuse,
find day old meats perfectly good.
I think of a nice hot shower.
Why don’t they want me,
even when cleaned up?
Belch!
I say sorry to the rats.
Rats have better manners than people.
I feed them every night,
‘cause they don’t bother me.
They like me, unlike humans.
I pick up bouncy balls, cat toys, and
whatever I can find to give them
something to play with.
They’re like my children.
Was married, 2 mil a year, and divorce.
She got it all…turns out that was
all she ever wanted, not me.
Now I’m just someone’s bum uncle.
Never invited for holidays,
like I’m some kind of leper.
Some doctors at Bellevue
tell me I “self-medicate”.
When I took their drugs it was worse,
worse than a bad trip
or a what’s left of that pint of shit
in my stomach.
I was catatonic, had no feelings.
I was dead.
But I escaped.
Now I’m alive.
People may ignore me,
but I know what I’ve got.
It’s a good thing.
Goodnight rats.
Time to dive into my box
and close the curtains.
I marvel at how some people can write about perspectives that they may not experience but have empathy enough to understand what it's like. In this case, it appears like a person who is not mentally unstable but still stigmatized by society and forced to make his home where it is. The line about making $2 million a year tells how far he has come.
I hope this is just your perceptive mind at work. I lived it and it is not a fun place to be in. Enjoyed your skill at piercing thru this subject without showing rancor or pain. I would have died in trying to write it. I wish you many beautiful days ahead. --Ed
Although difficult to identify for many of us, i.e., the living on the street culture, this cathartic discourse, this conversation with a fictional-oneself style of prosetry does afford opportunity for us to take each stanza and find our own kind of attachment, associate our own spot-checks, score-taking, et al. Finding a way to converse with our inner being is often difficult. Seeing ourselves honestly, a chance at freedom...like your carefree optimist, is not usually how one finds his or her mirrored image. One would hope we could all come out with a modicum of positive attitude and find any and all of society's shut-down remedies worthy of decapitation. (However, a bit of fire, say a couple of fingers now and again does interesting things to those rigid synapses that refuse to connect, give us some conversation...at least, honestly.) Kudos on a piece that will nudge the conscious and probably offend the looky-loo/goodygoodies who will with a cursory dismissal, continue to feel they're above it all. But... with a sense of humor, they might get past such a malaise. Sooner or later, we all find out delusion is available from many sources.
Pretty much have been there, done that, at least as far as living on the streets. Never could make myself forage through the dumpsters for food. Nope. Couldn't do that. Enjoyed reading this dark slice of life, I understood it.
From First Love to its destructive end and on to new beginnings, Mary Angela Nangini's poems explore the birth and death of a relationship. The powerful poems are presented in two parts with an introduction to her next book My Ontario Beautiful. (Th
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compelling read
Wow, just found your page and you are a talent.
Blessings,
Christine
Good work!
Ron
Regis
Michael D.
Homelessness can be overcome with a deep sense of fortitude and self esteem.
This is dark but I know this subject matter well.