HOMELESS
In front of me
My trolley.
On this journey
From park to park,
How much longer
Must I walk,
To discovery?
******************
Hyphenated beer cans
In a morning trailer park,
Demolished shadows
In the rubble of sunlight,
A mongrel on a frayed leash,
Life is in roughed up hands
Fondling blue-veined Milk less shriveled breasts
Jiggled by a smoker's cough,
Broken nails through colorless hair.
***********************
Scrambled brains,
Callused feet
Run away
From strains of Mozart,
Yesterday's donuts
Dipped in a paper cup
Of luke warm coffee,
Before children rise and shine
To play on sleepers of railroad tracks
With punctured balls.
***********************
How much further must I walk
Until my sleeping pills Overpower giant dreams?
I must but breathe,
Take the walls away,
Lift up the star-filled sky,
Bile has osmosed
Into my capillaries.
From park to park,
How much further must I walk?
************************
Can't you see the Northern Lights
Tear up the horizon
As if the sky is brittle wallpaper?
Can't you spy the silhouette
Of my wooden sailing ship?
One solitary lamp
Swaying in the night wind,
Over the slippery ice
Alone,
Without my shadow,
Over miles and miles
Of undulating monotony,
I have to walk towards the lamp.
In this land of bears
We have to walk
Always in their shadow,
Only the lamp is ours,
The miles belong to them.
**************************
Different flights to different worlds,
Life went on its way.
I stole this shopping cart
From Safeway before
They had security in place,
Out through automatic gates,
Deported from the freeway.
You were still at the counter
Waiting to pay.
Now I wobble through the yellow hills
That will turn green in winter rain,
In the cold, joints will pain,
They will hear me shiver.
Before that I must abstain,
I must shave and shower,
And wear my Salvation Army greatcoat.
Before that,
I must eat at the soup-kitchen.
**************************
The earthquake came unbidden,
No one had deciphered the seismic fault.
It cleverly rearranged homes into houses,
Scholars remained immersed in Gender Studies,
Agenda became propaganda,
The car factories kept rolling out
Better cars, to move the world
Guided by geo-stationary satellites
With American accents.
I settled with buses that were done for the day,
Beneath the BART stop
With a half eaten muffin
On a half moon night
Near a closed Starbucks
Behind the Station House.
***************************
They are cruising tonight,
School is out,
The contents of my shopping cart
Are 'awesome', incredibly fascinating,
And make jangling noises like my bones do
As we trip over a flagstone on the foot walk.
Taking me down is some growing-up macho thing,
As was tearing wings off dragonflies in primary
school,
They are actually mortally afraid of me,
So are their mothers and fathers,
So is my ladder-climbing wife
When blood comes out of my nose and mouth.
It is a pattern that I do not fit,
You dimwits.
***************************
I am afraid only Of the lonely walk,
How many mountains must I cross
Skirting valleys, envying the snow line,
Perpetually waiting for a Siberia, an Alaska,
Before I stop and learn to fly.
The winds are my cushion,
I bank above a forest of tall pine trees,
On the lake is my 'bird shadow',
The moss and fern grow below,
I am in the sunlight and clouds,
How much more must I fly alone?
******************************
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