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Bits and Pieces of Poetry
Salvaged by a Trash Truck Driver
for a Local Homeless Shelter

Thoughty Type Stuff

for when you think you have nothing better to do

and need a reason to find it

No Hand-Me-Down Help

One cannot see exquisite beauty
within a pile of pain
by looking down on it from above

One must look at the pain, feel it
on its own level in order to see through it
to glimpse the beauty beneath its veil

Nor from within a pile of pain can one see
beauty in those who bend over to help
by handing down their assistance

 Gratitude is best felt mutually
a reciprocity shared among equals, each
both giving and taking, all benefiting

We are none of us beyond help
or the ability to help, we are all
all, and all that we have to go on

 9/29/2018

Chalk Stick Figure

in an emotional state of chalk
firm, soft, powdery dust, messy
of some use for communication
nothing enduring, meant to be erased

2/20/2018

Self-Portrait, Redesigned, Resigned

I have already died, several times

Now I am the lone, silvered, not yet mangy bison
standing apart, watching, unblinking

Awaiting the whiff of dank fur, putrid breath
jagged pain ripping through my neck, signaling

The arrival of the pack of wolves, coyote
the cougar, bear, whatever might be coming

Bringing the final take-down
to release, feed the time

Accumulated in my remaining blood
back into the always hungry, regifting earth

4/28/2016

To Be Filed Under

Things too big to be seen:

Silent, unmoving, unspoken pains
whose presence is only hinted at
by fleeting, ghostly grimaces

occasionally twitching across faces
otherwise expressionless, faces
of those who harbor the pains
hold them under passive cover

form of them interior masses
desiccated, solid, fragile as chalk
ever likely to crumble or dissolve
perhaps be erased 

5/2/2018

Nothing Left but A Song

I feel like I am all done doing
everything I needed to do in this life

With all done and gone, with nothing left
to lose, it’s Janis, me, and Bobby McGee
and freedom

No more need to claim success, neither
by my own measure, nor anyone else’s
freedom to follow whimsy, wanton wants

I think I’d like to do something kind
without knowing I had, invisibly

5/28/2018

Wherein Hope Lies

It may be well and good for our spirits
to walk amongst trees and flowers
and feel renewed hope for a better world

But it may be better for our world
also to walk alongside, say, the homeless

appreciating the beauty beneath the pain
on their faces, in their expressive, if dirty, garb

Then, thus informed, find an effective way 
to treat our tolerance for suffering such as that
which we have come to abide

And only then feel hopeful

5/20/18

Dust In The Wind

The wind comes and goes
stirring up dust
sometimes much more

Eventually the dust settles
along with everything else

Things are changed, but go on

Feelings can fleet like the wind

coming and going
moving things around

Eventually things settle
changed a bit, or quite a bit

Likewise, emotions may come
but sometimes we catch and hold them

so instead of moving on
they then burrow

sometimes so deep they cannot leave
until dug out, set loose

allowed to stir our dust
perhaps along with our lives

5/25/2018

Dies Irae

Reflections pass through reflections
in the window by the door
as I sit listening to Baroque
while other homeless men exit
or enter; Rubino’s Requiem, Italian
Little is known about him

5/27/2018

Waking, 5:30 a.m.

Blocks, fragments, sharp edges of light
sharp, elongated, triangular points, spears
falling apart through empty space

no air to breathe between the pieces

no wind, silent motion, separation
downward trajectories of disintegration
no wind, silent motion, separation
downward trajectories of disintegration

The world, my world, my mind?
To be determined after coffee

6/14/2018

In the Bike Yard of the Homeless Shelter: Great
Intellectual Capacities Warped into Unusual Shapes
Through the Application of Multi-transactional Social Pressures

Definitively limited, encouraging, empathic
at baseline fundamentally impersonal

Guarded, supportive, widely accepting of deviance
from prevailing societal norms

Defiant, chronically unsure, parsing benevolent
from malevolent in every conversation

Wandering, lone neurons leaping self-preserving synapses
to make social connections

6/25/2018

Improvisation

Shards of life
falling into place
to render a new arrangement

Exquisitely chaotic
rich with invisible colors
notes not even played

Plug your ears and listen
Shut your eyes, and see

Listen. See. Open

Play

6/30/18

Space Travel in the Day Room

We are all aliens from other planets to each other
some of us from the same galaxy, others requiring
intergalactic travel in order to share common ground

On which each of us together so rarely gathered
have come packing different times and places
even different memories of those we have shared
different nostalgia for the different ways it wasn’t

We breathe in and exhale life in different ways
using that which we extract from our shared air
to sustain different desires, to answer instincts
foreign to one another, to feed our different bloods

Yet this common ground on which we seldom stand
along with that of our home planets and galaxies

and all the space between burst from a great, first star
which still bathes us all with the infinite colors of its light

7/7/2018

Lining Up In The Dust

Waiting here
to stand
in a line
over there…

to wait

Meanwhile, life
moves on
leaving dust
to settle
on us

Waiting here
to stand
in a line
over there…

To wait
over there
to stand
in a line
over here

7/11/201

Through Death Valley of the

Dry walking, dust walking
eyes closed or in slits, glancing
not for direction, but to avoid

No desire to feel contact
whether collision or friendly

Constant, veiled observation
occasional perceptions

If shared, not discussed

A loner, passing through
his own desert

7/22/2018

Of Addiction and Aspiration

Some emerge intent on staying afloat
on remembering how to swim to shore
walk on sand, solid ground, perhaps to fly

Others emerge for a gulp of fresh air
to restore reserves of life in their blood

sufficiently enough to take another dive
chasing an ever elusive pearl of adrenalin
by getting in deeper, closer to the bottom

7/23/2018

At the Roundtable of Improbably Surviving Dukes

“I haven’t seen John around for a while”
“He may have retired”
“Had that cough thing, y’know”

They’re referencing death and lung cancer, of course

Cragged, proud, old soldiers of the battle for better living
through chemistry; they remember when shit was shit
not the cut with who knows what and substitute formula shit
to begin with shit that they try to pass off as real shit these days

If you want anything close to that shit of old
you’ve got to go to the coasts, right off the boats
better yet, hire a boat to take you out to meet the shit ship, okay?

“Shit,” comments the collective chorus, their heads shaking
wild masses of hair, decades beyond any attempt to tame

Who knows what tales of dosages to kill elephants, tales
of the macabre, of Houdini-like escapes from authorities
encounters with plagues that have laid continents to waste
(their physiques at least giving plausibility to these accounts)

-- everyman’s tale to outdo every(other)man’s tale of foolishness
bravery, woe, and triumph or defeat, doesn’t matter, told
around present-day campfires, shared Mission meals, in parks
smoking allowed zones, anywhere reminiscence of unreality
can be conjured in covens, are true

Doesn’t matter, they sustain in the denouement years
of these old men’s lives, a belief, if perhaps illusory
that their lives are made of stories worth telling

As no doubt we’d like to think are our own, come the end

7/25/2018

Different Vibes

 He carries a flashlight hung on his belt – I surmise 
that he’s accustomed to searching for what he needs

Hiking boots and knee-length, cut-off jeans
untrimmed threads dangling over dead skin flaking
from his shins from sunburn or psoriasis, hard to tell

crew neck shirt, grey stripes inside white inside black
short hair, thinning, still mostly brown, white on top
on what will soon be a bald spot atop his crown

His face is ruddy from time spent out of doors, a face filled
with at least two or three decades of pain. Brown eyes, soft
set in a permanent half-wince seem like they’d cry if they could

if they dared. Furrowed brow, likely a few too many drinks
sometimes, not habitually, though, instead pouring himself
into the music he’s playing on his guitar and in his head

He’s seated on a bench, intensely strumming out his blues
on the three strings that remain whole on his unplugged
road-worn, electric guitar, the three broken strings curled
into an ephemeral cloud of nylon around the peghead
still fastened to it by the tuning pegs

He stops to put his ear to the body of the guitar, above its waist
reaches up to turn the three pertinent pegs, tuning his instrument
You can hear his song just by looking at him. Only a note
or two from his guitar is audible, but his pain is a silent sound
that cuts to the heart, provided one’s heart is willing to hear it
see it, maybe even smile and nod

Doesn’t look like he’s of a mind to take your look wrong
beat the crap out of you. Always a consideration here
I consider how he needs to feel that he’s been heard, seen
Breaking across his face comes a wide, full, short-lived smile
cracking his dry lips. I comment that I wish I could hear his music
as clearly as he must be hearing it in his head

He replies that he doesn’t hear music, doesn’t really know
how to play the guitar, just likes the feel of the different vibrations
on his fingers

7/27/2018

The Fire Poem

We are surrounded by fire

From whatever direction
comes the odor of living things
going up in smoke

We remind ourselves
the acrid odor
could be ourselves burning

the smell of life
regenerating
wiping clean the slate

for the next generation
to start over anew
with dreams as big as ours

Life comes from life
passing

9/18/2017

Transformation

What’s useful now: my life lived
as abstract feelings. This land burns
as this countryside, both in flames

Fire is life giving way to life comes
from life passing, into indigenous dirt
melding, soil with familial bonds, ties
to ancestral wisdom, reverence, deep
within boulders, sand, wind, streams
fire burning us all down to the ground

to bare roots bearing restoration
health, nurture, opening earth
to seeds of change. We need not
let go, ashes will fall through
our fingers, our fingers’ ashes also

impossible to grasp. Memories
both true and false simultaneously
blown into a time when, further
away. Is anything saved, saved?

We are at best only of use temporarily
tending to growing restorative roots
within our own soil as next time now
and always again the coming fire
will reignite, consume, renew

08/02/2018

Periodically, Tremors (taking a turn on Lincoln)

What blows a house apart
is not the earthquake, rather
resistance to it. Joists gone rigid
no space for the floor to dance

No give, no flex, irresistible force
meets object reluctant to move
Seismic waves wave it goodbye

A house rigidly bound to form
forgets its purpose is its function
will soon divide and fall short

Recently I’ve heard it said
that the meek are of a mind
to inherit sooner rather than later

8/3/2018

What Comfort

I sit here encased in painted, cement block walls
in colors meant to quiet – butter and Dijon mustard
German Chocolate Cake brown on the doors, all
now battered and scuffed, the floor tiles likewise
ceilings off-white, lit by search light fluorescents

I sit here amidst a gathering of anxieties, garbed
in exotic costumes of chance and conscious choice
co-mingled in our clothes as in our varied life stories
impossible now to parse out, in any case, pointless

Various infestations on, under, inside various skins
residing more often than not in our nervous systems
along with kindness, yearning, jokes, laughter, fear
wonderings what happened, and now what might

So human, so many humans, all so very different
having slipped off the edges of so many worlds
all swept together in this room of battered colors
meant to soothe, wondering what, if anything…

Worth a try? Get back in the game, and again
be gamed by those writing un-leveling rules
to their own advantage, dismissing our talents
if not cheaply, easily translated into capital gains?

Relegating unrealized talent -- in business terms
human resources -- to sit in a room of cement blocks
garbed by choice and chance, as are they themselves
seeking to tune out worries with tv and silent stares

8/5/2018

Mine Mountain ‘tis of Thee Parable

When gold is mined from a mountain
rubble is left to fall down the sides

as the precious ore is hoisted up
to those living on the mountain top
with overlooking decks, enjoying its view

In time the mountain becomes hollow
with more weight than it can support
living atop its peak in golden lodges

and a lot of dislodged, unsecured
loose, angry, unpredictable rubble
piling up at the bottom

8/5/2018

Proceed with Caution

dark mood, dull patch of pavement
stressed underneath, surface smooth
appears unbroken, still useful, easy to walk over

without tripping, hurting feet, stubbing toes
without noticing, thinking anything about it

doesn’t take much effort, helps to get you there
no promises for the way back, though
should you return

8/18/2018

Stone Cold Sober Radicals

Homeless shelters requiring abstinence for a bed and food
halfway homes, clean and sober homes, all such camps
for refugees are radical breeding grounds in America today

People from all walks of life, often numbed to it
have fallen through a mirage safety net woven of rhetoric
untruths, false promises

and the need of people living everyday lives to believe
that they are not at risk, can live without fear of losing it all
easily, live without foreseeing coming disaster, a bad star
in their everyday alignment, to believe promises made

by older generations, school systems, universities, trade schools
churches, the collective pillars of society promising that those pillars
were solid, would support them

in their pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness, that happiness being
the ability to acquire more and more, spend limitlessly, work more
and more hours to pay for it all, take vacations -- if the boss
can do without them for that long without replacing them

keep following directions for four decades then retire
into golden retirement with sufficient wealth to live out their dreams

if not too worn out, too weary to do so, too enmeshed
with their children’s struggles to follow along the same formula
whose lives keep blowing up in their faces

Now those fallen through from all walks of life, once invisible
to one another have only time to talk, reminisce, theorize
build conspiracy theories of all sorts and degrees of plausibility

an intermingling of those fallen through with those who already
had stepped away, many with quite intelligent minds, but bored
by rote learning, waiting for others to catch up to them, rebellious
placed in special education, dropped out

Now sharing two beliefs in common:  they are where they are
because the rich don’t give a damn, live only to acquire more
and those in power only understand wealthy people’s money

Trust, fundamentally lost, democracy, capitalism, worth crap
Maybe five times as many elaborate, fantasized explanations
as the participants in any conversation, but all of them angry

fundamentally seething, fires ready to be lit, ready to burn
in as many directions as there are minds envisioning them
talking stone cold sober, and more falling through everyday

I am fortunate to already be here in the safety of living on land
already burned, counted among the rank and file of people burnt
now with nothing left to lose, ready to start over -- outside
of the rules

8/19/2018

Incubating an Epidemic