If human shit on the sidewalk offends you
Think where you would crap
In the middle of the night
If you were forced to live on the streets;
If walking by sidewalk tent
Encampments is uncomfortable
For you, imagine how a 30% rent
Increase, loss of job, sudden
Hospitalization, or owner-move-in
Could pull the rug out
From under you, the many possible
Trajectories from security & safety
To the chaos of precarity when lacking
Shelter– all too easy
To imagine (& then dismiss);
If the scattered empties, wasted
Faces, ragged clothes soiled
With the grime of urban elements,
& the needles in the gutters scare
You, consider what cheap escape
You would turn to if continual danger,
Sleeping on wet pavements, hunger, &
Roused by cops or DPW at 4AM on a daily
Basis tore your humanity & your soul
To shreds & eliminated any hopes
You once might have borne;
Consider too how having
To confront the shit, the tents,
The meth-depleted faces
Nearly every day teaches powerful
Lessons, lessons mothers can convey
To offspring, teachers to students, landlords
To tenants, and foremen to laborers
About just how much shit they will
Be willing to put up with at school, apartment,
And job, & the many injustices they will witness
But do nothing about because they know
How much worse their life
Could really be;
Lastly ponder whether these lessons
Might account for the curious fact
That those having both the power
& the resources actually to banish
Homelessness & the vast inequalities
Everywhere make noise but do little
Else precisely because those lessons
Provide a vital cement
Binding together an inhumane system
Riven with contradictions &
Having serious cracks in its facade.
