No Sense of Belonging,
No Place to go.
Wander through the night, Wander through the snow.
Wander through the Storms, as it rains so hard.
No Home near, No home far.
Wander the streets and upon the Park,
Wander ‘til the sky goes dark.
They wander past, but they don’t see,
I’ll Never have a place to be.

No place to call Home,
No place to stay.
Wander, fade, till you rot away
Wander so wide, Wander so far,
Wander ‘til thy only memoir
descent to loneliness, reality to stray,
Your only memory, left to Decay.

Her speech is soft,
And she withdraws without offending.
A need for privacy, a gated soul.
Watchful, assessing all that one does,
yet not judgmental.
The tenuous connection of the wary,
careful with other humans.
But her compassion enormous,
reserved for the most unfortunate, who
through wretched happenstance  
are unable to make their own way.
The sick, the feeble, the troubled,
the emotionally destitute,
somehow find their way to her door,
the unknowable gift by which the needy
intuitively understand human kindness.
A rare generosity,
an uncompromised sense of right and wrong.
A shunned autistic boy befriended,
rescued four-legged friends,
clothing gathered for the poor.
A homeless teen brought to tears by the purchase of a prom dress.
No great wealth, no abundance of resources
waiting to be dispatched at the touch of a screen.
Only a wherewithal borne of an impassioned need to help,
to speak out, maybe to erupt in angry persuasion
to sate an abiding sense that one must do what one can.

The red eyes
And snot stained
Sleeves

The shudders of
Emotional agony

The cement stones
Standing in rows

The tears of strangers
Without homes

The raggedy man
With years of grey growth
Holding a sign
So you know
That he needs help

The elderly man
Spotted skin
Wrinkling
While people
Keep forgetting him

The climate changed
Species displaced
And people running away
To find a safe place

Me, begging you to see
The suffering of humanity
While you just ignore me

A little girl with hopes and dreams
An artistic mother whose smile beams
A burly father who protects the team
Family is as it seems

A little girl that is confused
A fighting mother who is always bruised
A father that now grabs the *****
Family is far from smooth

A young girl that can’t understand
A tired mother who sits on her hands
An angry father who only demands
Family crumbles like sand

A teenage girl with a broken heart
A single mother falling apart
A father lying asleep in a park
Family is far from the start

A teenage girl who sleeps around
A mother buried in the ground
A father who is chained and bound
Family is not profound

A young adult with pain on her mind
A mother who is still resigned
A father who was left behind
Family is redefined

The soft blow of the trumpet or
the strum of guitar strings cajole the uninterested
to see the hand-lettered sign,
the cigar box, the jam jar
as the loyal dog curls in the doorway.
The deaf, the blind, the besotted, the luckless,
all night thieves of blankets,
sellers of wilted roses on a double white line.
Ghosts on street corners who sidle through the rain
in search of some, in search of any
until a last breath among the silhouettes
of the night fires that lick at the black winter sky.