The Places You Go In Your Mind

Observations

Frail and dirty,

he is nothing but a cardboard sign

to the cars that blindly pass him by

No one stops to read his carefully chosen words

They will eagerly give to charity

but they will not spare their change

for a single hungry man at the foot of the off-ramp

Huddled on a bus bench with everything she owns

stuffed into a backpack,

she is fighting off the cold and praying

that someone will drop their bus pass

and no one will chase her away

An entire life is packed into a shopping cart

and contained in a tent,

pitched against the fence of the cemetery

They crawl like ants from the mouths of the steam tunnels,

emerging from cracks in security

and gaps in fences, from boarded-up windows,

and from unobserved corners, out of sight

When the sun rises, they multiply,

those afforded a bed for the night being turned out for the day,

and they walk, their whole lives in their arms

There are so many of us out here,

some of us luckier than others

We dodge cops while praying for food, shelter, money, anything

We are the forgotten, neglected, and desperately needy members

of a society whose dependence on monetary value

has labeled us useless, unimportant, human scrap

and tossed us away

We are homeless because we could not do enough,

earn enough, to be considered valuable enough to help

We are the shame of a country which calls itself an economic superpower

We are a third-world nation of vagrants,

living within the borders of a country who would rather pretend we don't exist