Bitter hostile pavement
Cold cold cold
Forgotten but not forgiven
Anger eroded to apathy
Hated and hurting.
The smell of desperation turning away politer nostrils
Begging, for money, for understanding, for a moment of time.
Hand to mouth, hand to mouth, hand to mouth.
Cardboard string and scraps - a home fit for a beggar
Desolate, despised, disowned.
Dirt and dustbins, home and help
A fitting feast for a forgotten fellow
Turn away, walk away, cold, cold, cold
Useless and used up. ignored and ignoble.
Spare some change. Change awareness
Change minds change lives,
Change the system. Change the world.
Hopes dashed against the concrete of an open skied prison
The urban fox a more welcome dinner guest.
A crime against society or a crime of society
Deprived of much more than a place to live.
A groundhog day begins with the smell of diesel and upturned rubbish
A dawn chorus of binmen clattering and shouting to awake the dead.
The homeless arise: Dead men walking.
An old carrier bag as a picture of a life
Unwanted and un-noticed it floats past on the breeze
It’s whole reason-to-be somewhere in the past.
The day as long as the desire to live it
Then retreat. To bed or the bottle or the back of the mind.
How to hide from the horror and loneliness?
hand to mouth, hand to mouth.
Scraping by,
Where there’s a will there’s a way.
Scraping a living,
Where there’s a way there’s hope.
Scraping the bottom of the barrel,
Hope against hope in hell.
The foxes have holes, and the birds have nests;
But the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.
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2 comments:
Rob...I like the diverse input here, it made me think about all the times i have just walked past a homeless person in the streets and simply ignoring them, arrogantly believing that their troubles were there own, and indefinately caused buy themselves...how wrong i am.
I've caught up on a few of those programmes on bbciplayer and they have given an interesting insight to how the majority of homeless people end up on the streets simply because somebody couldn't be bothered to look after them or help them when they were young.
Today, I walked past the beggar in Alti, near Blocbuster, and having walked past him in neglect almost every other day, I said "Hi, how are you coping?" and the reply was "Not great, but thanks for asking" which made me feel like I'd improved his day just like the teenage boozer who woke the bloke on tv.
We all had our reasons for wanting to explore this topic, but the inspiration for me for this Cafe Sundae came from Mark (his real name).
Mark turned up at Alty Methodist when I was preaching there (on homelessness...)
Mark was 41 and had been homeless for 19 years.
A few of us took it in turns to meet Mark most lunchtimes and build a relationship with him. Over a week he came to trust us and open up.
His parents had been heroin addicts. He remembers growing up knowing what equipment to use.
He decided he had learnt enough once he had finished primary school and so never went to secondary. Social services didn't catch up with him till he was 16 when they put him into adoption.
At 18 he left his adopted parents and life had more bad cards to deal him. He discovered his schizophrenia and his own heroin addiction. In the paranoia of his mental disorder he robbed a neighbour's house...courts give you a big sentence for first time breaking and entering, and a bigger sentence if it is someone who trusted you...so he got 4 years and served 2 years 7 months of it.
He's been in and out of prison since, and on the streets the rest of the time.
The earliest interview at the council was in a week and half's time. The building was in Sale and difficult to find.
3 doctors said 'no' to seeing him, the 3rd one changed its mind, saw him and gave an urgent referral to the mental health unit.
Council referred him 3 times before we found a place where the staff were trained and willing to take on someone with addictions and mental disorders. The nearest place was in North Manchester near Blackley.
All this time he was living in a tent near Red House Farm, hoping that no-one would spot it and move him on.
The good news is that after a month of trying, he is now in the system and getting the help he needs.
It leaves me with the following questions:
1. Why is the system so hard to get into?
2. How does any homeless person get into the system without the help of people willing to persist against the bureaucracy?
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