I Wish I'd Written This

Collective

roads have many beginnings

many unnoticed steps

stones we shuffle through an indistinct dark

towards a certain failure that lies between

the hopeful and slowly the inevitable.

here, at the End of the Road

America seems to tilt sharply down;

Her highways from the heartland

bleed out through wheat fields and corn stalks;

arteries of hard luck and broken choices

          that drain slowly their dust into the sea

and if you open your eyes,

you will see them

the ones who still have color on their clothes

the ones who don’t pull their madness around them like a Mac:

2 new arrivals

the contents of their former lives lying askew;

spilling from a contrivance of the familiar

still far less trash bag than backpack

one rocking slowly into his own grey

reality clearing long lines down his face

whispering a shout no louder than the passing cars

the other, frantically searching

the shallow pits they made in the rocks

to keep the December trades off them;

learning why the homeless never sleep at night

no no not her picture

not her picture

the wallet lies open on the concrete: money has no worth to the homeless

but home;

     that is worth your soul

no no no no no no

we’ll find it… we will. 

                      I promise we’ll find it

all those things you can't buy back

with a careless five dollar bill and change

panhandled from their curbside haunts

no

 please no

please

I know his choices were never mine, but they are certainly my sadness

passing by

at the precise moment when

       homeless

reaches straight through the heart

to pierce the dark

and eyes

dull as the freeway dust that covers them

finally see

but even this is not an ending;

this road doesn’t fall into the sea

          a meandering story to sorrows;

no: they continue on into endlessly the cold

a collective of the cast off:

a collective guilt

a collective responsibility,

a plausible deniability;

every grey-man-of words

who wants your vote

so they can total them up

and the road is all that's left to us;

II

streets that click-clack with countless pairs of feet marching to the bonanza and the crippled beat.

Though docilely titillated, the feet are too haughty with the slickness of socio-economic self-awareness to tap-dance, or throw down their things, and join the throng of Harikrishnas who thrum along at one with gods, sky and street.

I myself am not observing from no mount, cloud nor tower; nor am I leaving the museum nor library. No: I'm propelled homewards by carrier bags.

I'll not stoop to mention the tyrannical logos, but you can imagine the all-sorted shapes, sizes, textures and colours; square and oblong enigmas containing further enigmas, charms, beauty and power.

One homeless guy - tramp, bum, hobo - stands out, though he's asprawl on the pavement, in that he resembles Alan Ginsberg, the American poet.

I and all the other feet - wise to the city, and as cold as the sleet that's starting to fall - like one niggard divided into ten thousand pairs, do not condescend eye-contact, let alone spare change.

A conscience cannot be salved by contrasting a junkie, too hurt for action, with a 'third-world' child.

Homelessness is a concept alien to 'primitive' societies.

The sunlight dims and a spectrum of electric lights strike incantational on the neo-classical and 'postmodern' streets.

I arrive home and can't decide whether to put the kettle on or open wine.

III

Passed bitter apples spit and cussed,

here morning stings.

Dawn brings rest to clingy ghosts;

coffee roasts steep the breeze,

rich with omens

kick start the hearty,

My View Carre rising

My Wash Tub on Rampart

Under Cosmo Matassa's

Where Fats, Ray and Lil Richard

Keep the vibes clean with a back beat,

These lean times folks bleeding

Still needing fresh laundry,

The tawdry and maids waiting, hustlers and servants

Keep quarters and soap,

Wash, press and I fold

Assessing a pound, two fifity

I know them. They trust me.

But see please

An episode of squint and splendor

Ripe with fear and loathe of longing,

Kissed a tear bunching up on my lip

Flipped down,

Globe of laugh covered pity filling a comet

Smash a crater in the tender silk I imprint on

Yes Officer he was a friend I'd say

Murdered today? That park beyond the bridge

For what? For nothing he wouldn't give

He had an orange; half was yours.

He shared the bareness of his being,

Chose to loose his check on finer things,

Beyond a roof and piece of sand.

Urban outdoorsman he proclaimed

And knew his mail would come with mine,

In the winter time,

Spring he wandered north beneath the snow geese

Said the heat released his banshee

And the rot he got in 'Nam.

He was a kind man.

He called a niece back east on Christmas,

All he ever had, never named her.

She could claim him maybe.

He kept his fortune in his pocket;

Head busted with a rock,

For a sock chocked with change;

Drank and smoked exchanging disabilities,

Till he was free, was all he tried to be,

Real to me,

Cleansed from memory

Fast as he passed their high hats,

His plump aroma second lined,

He thought it fine and called it French.

They curse his stench and prayed for pity on our city.

He truly lived here. Teaching without preaching,

Through the screams still dared to dream here

Quoted Clemons, Looked like Whitman,

A Navy Cross, blue book mark ribbon

Glib before the hitman I'm sure

His simple censure feeds the mean

Between the gentle and obscene;

High righteous heads shake at the scene,

Claiming the street more serene

Each bloody litter taken back

And black taking a black,

Katrina gleaned Angola youth

Strangled blue.

I lack the gifts to tell you

Truth balloon puppy bent.

He was a friend who lived a tom cat's deal

But lived for real.

and of roads there may be many

and all of them we can't not travel

choosing one 200 years ago

brought the European to the Ohio valley

the buckeye forest almost hid the

pounding river.....

but when i walked there

40 summers ago

only strip-mined

mountain sides collapsed in to coal stained valleys

these roads that brought us into

a third millennium encircle the planet

becoming electrons

or into space as rockets or planes

humanity cast the future

each one a person

the old Hopi informs

embrace the spirit

forsake the road

but sometimes it seems

the road is all that's left to us.....

IV

but America is not the world

nor the only road.

How can I walk a mile

in the shoes he does not have?

Already I felt out of place

ivory towered

fed and showered

posh hotel in the city

on a work trip.

Almost dark in the park

seeking the breath of trees

against the smog

I saw the jolly swagman camping

not beside the Billabong

but Parramatta Road.

He did not return my greeting

but settled underneath a bench

underneath a street light

underneath the tattered remains of his dignity

pulling close about him

a polite invisibility

resting his head

on the stones of forgetfulness.

But I saw

and I remember:

V

I watched them come from the coasts,

floating in like some leaving of forsaken cargo, 

as flotsam, the jettisoned of humanity, 

marked for a drop off to nowhere-in-particular

they carried with them history in the making,

asking little but for safe haven from tornadoes

and snow as they spanned a continent, coast-to-coast,

this nation supposedly indivisible,

but always divided by rank and class

this one which calls all other "pots" black

melting together faces from all points on the globe,

confined to a track of migration, spinning in a milky

way, never transparent and just as opaque 

They drag in the pitch, the black and heated of asphalt,

finding comfort in the meeting places unspoken,

unmarked but intimated by tradition

of those who came and went before 

This is their road wound through the middle like a belt,

(holding two halves of a country and coasts

neatly pulled together,)?, a familiar old footpath

worn through (center?)(heartland?), and solid (as hardwood ?)

from the east coast heat to the west coast lull

and sweet pacifist breezes, he and she prefer

to carry knapsack and backpack while bearing 

little conformity to dreams spun in America's sleepfulness 

they walk among the awake and aware,

that life is rarely ever fair, and fairy tales

are for children and for dreamers 

with one eye on the sky and the other on the road 

with thumbs up and signs out, I watched them 

sign out of the standard issue, make a pact with 

the road less traveled, form a community of

compassionate companions and pray for a kind sun: 

 VI

A new day had begun,

she found herself

among the collective.

Watched, and watching him

from her booth, the only place

she lived these days...

Beneath pools of black coffee

between cracks of maroon

pleather upholstery,

She spied him surreptitiously

with her little eye - those childhood

games played on continual loop,

ooops... did he catch her glance?

Now smiling into her compact,

the blush of her mirror reflecting

hope as often reapplied as her lipstick

in shades of Apple Pie in the Sky Red.

A Maybelline bestseller

America, America....

God paint his face on me.

Me was the new black.

It's the century of the Me, yet

Everyone thought they

were so down with empathy.

E to the M to pathy.

was that spoonful of sugar

helping bitter truth go down as we

Fed on the holy host, its communion

formed by states of a union

where the dissolute and the destitute

sat side by side - Some eating their fill

of themselves, and others rummaging

through garbage bins hungry

for any scraps of attention

VII

as he sits in front of the Safeway

with no shoes and a broken soul

muttering to himself quietly

staring obsessively at grains and gravel

in the breaks in the cement.

The thermometer dips below zero

but there is no place to go;

the shelters are boarded and planked

not a penny in their coffers;

a blanket would be a kindness

but there's no blanket to spare.

He mutters to himself delusions

hopeless yet hopeful

waiting for a savior.

She sits wasted

bloated arm and dirty needle

barely breathing

glazed eyes and vacant stare.

What is left of hope?

Bitter memories with no prospects.

She mutters to herself quietly

as she fills a syringe

hoping that this time

this time it will work,

this time a solution will come

as she shoots up with

other blood sacrifice

for the fleeting forgetfulness:

VIII

and so it is with a preferential blindness we all turn

consumed instead with the hustle and bustle of acquiring

Gifts, we tell ourselves, gluttonous eyes covered

with the blinders of green, silver and gold

cold with hypnotic blinking,

a crumpling and tinkling ringing in our ears

bills and coins deny the beat of empathy,

defy our sensibilities and swallowed down

with guilt - a gulp of tears at injustice and inequity

Where sailed the mercies found in winter?

Did they flee on a sled with a jolly old myth?

Did they run in the rain or the flurry of snow

when storming the gates, doors mauled

with competition, acquisitions to keep up with

the Joneses

We display the jovial in lights with frivolous abandon

obstructing the view of the first Passion 

when Love asked nothing for the giving 

and the reason for this season lays like that crucifix

empty but trumped by an insistence to obscure the ugly and the real 

So where fled the mission of justice?

That cry from the manger, the cross 

or the lady standing in a harbor  

all hoarse with the years of neglect and ignorance

We hoarded our impotence in pursuit of the shining

emerging from the catacombs of commercial- search for treasure

but failed to carry one small shovel loaded with the golden rule,

or fire for the censors of frankincensal prayers

or apply the myrrh of soothing, salve for the wounds of the outcast

IX

I turned off the engine of the machine,

turned over the keys of wanton collection

and in the stillness of no rush and sweet hush

learned the sanctity of the true language of love

which flows from the mouth of God's broken heart

Compassionate deeds are the proofs that confess

not the decking of halls with holly and guests,

to convey in a mission of mercy and cheer

that hope's 'round the corner in the turn of a year

and that peace for our fellows is a tangible gift

and that good will to all is as simple as this

a present to others that Christmas had missed: 

X

a collective of the cast off:

a collective guilt

a collective responsibility,

a plausible deniability;

every grey-man-of words

who wants your vote

so they can total them up

to more of the same inane blindness,

a deliberate unseeing of loss

not giving a toss, no coin,

just a kick in the balls

and a night sleeping rough.

england, a weeping sore

scratched by thoughts of empire

and being the ones who once won the war,

a wistful longing

for a land that never was,

"the past is a foreign country

they do things differently there"

england a weeping sore

kids in care "groomed and raped"

state sponsored bankers

get a hundred grand knocked off a ten mill pension

and cry foul,

howl at them, at all the opium-of-the-people TV

x-factoring us in to blindness

it's a kindness really,

not to see the paucity of our lives

divide and rule

divide and rule,

and so at last, drowning in our silence

we take one last gasp of humanity

and grasp again for the road,

take to the road, and walk it with me

take to the road

the road is all that's left to us.....

a long grey-dust road that’s left to us,

                                             each and all

the Writers of Alabaster & Mercury

All Rights Reserved, 2012

Larry Kuechlin

Frater Rodderz

Dwayne St. Romain

Peter Doyle

Marty Smith

Lori Gomez

Deborah Trimble

Debra Webb Roberts

Si Philbrook

Yes, this is unusually long compared with my other posts here, but I found it rivetting from start to finish. And of course could not have written it, as it is the work of a collective, and focuses on homelessness as observed in different places — but I would love to be capable of every section. Even though the poem is long and the subject matter confronting, the lead-up to Christmas seems the perfect time for us all to be reminded.

I republish this with permission.  One of the contributors, Peter Doyle, who has been featured here before, posted it in his facebook notes. That led me to Larry Kuechlin, who is listed as the Publisher of Alabaster and Mercury. And what is Alabaster and Mercury? (Great name, don't you agree?) The information supplied to me says:

Alabaster & Mercury was established by Larry Kuechlin in 2007 as a private and hidden group that would allow writers to confidently workshop their poetry in a positive, constructive atmosphere. The group features authors published by major publishing houses and published poets from all around the world, but is structured for both the accomplished writer and the absolute beginner, one of which is just 12 years old.

Alabaster & Mercury is also a publishing house in its own right, with 10 titles published to date. 

Although the workshop group is hidden, the publishing house is more public, so check out the website. As well as individual titles in the book store, there is advance news of a new anthology:

Poems and photos used in ‘I Wish I’d Written This’ remain the property of the copyright holders (usually their authors).