poem

It seems the sun came up again today
I see the effects filtering through the hand made brown paisley curtains at the south end my room
The light creates a warmth I feel somewhere between flesh and bone
It's a day like no other

Strolling down 22nd st

Brillo, salt & pepper hair matted by the nights spent on the filth stained sidewalks,
Our eyes catch, and conversation ensues
Hal must be 60 years old
when I ask he merely shakes his head

"This is my mother"
Reaching into the depths of layers that warm his sickly frail body,
that resembles the images i've seen of starving children in Africa
out comes a pocket size photo album full of pictures from his childhood,
His last remaining possesion that links him to those that loved him.

He continuely chants,
"I've gotta get to her"
"I've gotta get to her, she's got cancer"

I learn snippets of Hal and his life
Stories of his love for football, everything Jazz and how he came to live without a home
His quiet resigned voice, intensifies
"I've been to the dark places, experienced the spirits"

His sagging brown tired eyes,
and ravaged body reveal the truth
"I've been to the dark places"

Impoverished.
Wake up and see the impoverishment
It lurks in the dark corners of complacency
marinating in the milieu of our lives
It bathes itself in our meglomaniac ideas of the good life, charity and stature
We are the sleeping giant

She spent a years wage on a bottle of perfume that she wiped off the Nazeren's feet with her hair and tears
A thriving soul that experinced the darkness

Thriving souls wade in the fringes
consistently wrestling in the depths of their ugliness
ugliness that plays like a broken record and propels them to deal with darkness
darkness that reveals light

The dark places
He says
I've seen the dark places