Screaming in the night
Dogs barking, sirens wailing
Tale of the city

Jimbo this is a great description of the city.. now I know why I don't live there :)... by the way how is ya??? on the up and up I hope....alice
-------
This reminds me of Pete Townshend's "Exquisitely Bored in California"....dogs howl in the alley, crazy women scream.......very descriptive indeed, Jimbo....cecily
-------
Thank you both! and yes i'm doing fine, have to watch that spicy stuff that i love so much. Thanks again . Jimbo
-------
house sparrows
limp threadbare laundry
tenements...................RAS
-------
curled up in her bed
as night falls on the reststop
station wagon home
~Quiche~
-------
~rewrite~
night falls on rest stop
curled up in her makeshift bed
station wagon home
~Quiche~
-------
broken panes
listlessly replaced
with cardboard............RAS
-------
parking lot playground
children of the rainbow
stretch imagination
~Q~
-------
surplus cheese
children gather 'round
cardboard box
~Q~
-------
children run
northend of town
he wears blue
~Q~
-------
Pensioners
in rotting humpies
City Hall........alice
-------
iron shanties
Men huddle for warmth
'round open fire.......alice
-------
frigid winter day
palms warm themselves around
buildings heat exchange
(~Q~ i'm sure that square metal mesh
on the side of a building that blows
out heat has a name,,,but i can't think
of it...so i named it heat exchange,
seems i heard someone refer to it as
that once)

-------
dumpster diving,
pizza--still in the box!
we eat well tonight
~Q~
-------

-------
when I visit the city, especially at night I am ashamed at what I see.. ashamed that as a nation we cannot do something about the thousands of homeless people. The gap between the rich and the poor is definately widening.......alice who has much more to say on the subject, but I don't want to bore you guys :)
-------

Cop with a flashlight
Wakes me from my sidewalk home
"Move along Buddy"....
~~~~~~~
On the streets,
"whatcha won't do for
a dollar"....
~~~~~~~
Monday is Payday
Twelve dollars and a cookie
Just to bleed your veins
~Q~
~~~~~~~
~~alice,several years ago, here in Michigan, the Governor thought it would be a good idea to empty the state mental hospitals onto the streets. Several state hospitals closed, but the streets became a bit sadder, and more dangerous....Then he decided to empty the welfare lines...again quite successfully. The shelters and churches are busier these days. There is quite a dilemna, no one wants to pay for the lazy, mental, and habitual drug users, (tho they are always with us), yet there are others who fall through the cracks...(women fleeing abusive mates, teen moms, drug addicts cleaning up their act, kids kicked out onto the streets, etc.)What to do? ~Q~
-------
I like all of thse poems about being poor and lving on the streets. I would think that you are poor, the way you write. Like you have been there. I like ~Q~'s poems about Payday, and about the cheese, and about the stationwagon home. I like RAS's about the cardboard windows, and alice's about the open fire. Do they really make fires on the streets? I liked Jimbo's too. SOme of them are scarey. I live out in the country, so I never saw bums or anything. --MJ
-------
Thanks for your comments MJ.. unfortunately a sad fact of life for so many people... In Australia you don't see too many fires on the streets, but in other cities I've visited where it's been freezing, they make them in 44 gallon drums...To live out in the country is a blessing indeed...alice
-------
I'm a country boy too, MJ - I've only seen what ~Quiche~ writes about on tv. But I see a lot of rural poverty, and a lot of brown cardboard windowpanes.....RAS
-------
she steps lightly passed
expectation in her eyes
car headlights, her stage
clutching her best purse
and wearing silk petticoat
her lover, she seeks
- another sad image of forgotten people in the city. This woman was in her late 70's I guess. Her face wore the expression of a young woman who knew her beauty could stop people in their tracks, but she herself did not realise she was not wearing her outer garments.
...cinnabar

-------
cinnabar: it's incredible the people you see out there sometimes. There is an older man in my town who dresses in silk shirts, tight mini skirts, sometimes just lingerie...at first you laugh, but then you look deeper, into his soul...
some of the people i have loved the most have been these souls who no one else gets to know. It is so easy to pass them on the street, look the other way, or laugh, but what a treat to get to know them (well, some of them). There was a
bag lady who lived on the streets, an older woman, who cussed loud and talked to people who weren't there, scared the heck out of most people. If you approached her, she would start screaming and cussing. She carried around blankets and
plastic bags. One day i tried to talk with her, to no avail. Then i offered her a sandwich, having to leave it on my porch. The next day, she took the sandwich. Thereafter, she came everyday for her sandwich. As long as she didn't cuss,
i let her have dinner with us. One day, i (bravely) offered to wash and cut her hair. She hadn't bathed in years, i am sure. She opened herself up to us, and even told us her birthday. That year, we threw her a birthday party, with cake
and ice cream, decorations and gifts. She had spent 30 years living on the streets. It was her first party in decades. She cried. I thank God for blessing me with the time we had with her, times i would have missed if i would have just
passed her on the street, with nothing more than a nervous laugh, like so many of us do....~Q~