Chanting terror-filled rants,
cries of the insane echo
on early morning streets,
riffling in the detritus
of cans and bottles
on their painful hejira
through the wastes of chaos.
No one answers their incantation,
yet within reach silent trees rise
from cubicles of hardened dirt
to find air and sunlight
above the voices of the lost.
Despite relentless fear
and blanketing depression,
my lips move in quiet prayer,
making space for the forgotten
on their lonely pilgrimage,
alien within the crowded city.
Reading of “Space for the Forgotten” with music by David Bowie
Don, well-expressed, a fine image but when we do begin hearing the incantations, what do we do to help? Like many places, our area of California is deliberating all kinds of plans. After all, we don’t live in splendid isolation here like some of our friends in Milwaukee and the eastern shore of Maryland.
Thanks for giving this a careful reading Tom.
The incantations refer back to the “cries of the insane” and “terror-filled rants.”
As far as solutions go, I’m a poet, not a social worker. However, a first step might be to stop subsidizing drug addiction, which CA, OR and WA all do, and perhaps put some real $$ into mental health rather than our obscenely bloated funding of military armament.
DH
It is an epidemic of dismay… tremendous dislocation of hearts and minds
Homelessness of the soul
Thank you for this, Don. I have a friend who works daily with the homeless here in Victoria. I will share this poignant poem with him.
Beautiful. “Keep hope alive!”
I see and feel the dismay and sadness. I hold the candle of forgiveness close in awareness. May this be a blessing to the lost and the hurt.