vagrancy forms the pupil
loitering firms a study
a passenger of the seasonal influence

believe in the homeless
the pigeons and the litter
lovingly observe the unhandled gaps
in our gathered mouthings

believe in big babies
believe in display
the posters
walls
malls
the money bleed
that we are sincere to
and the signals that thread us
to one single box

invited and isolated
housed
unhoused
on vacation
and vacated

inattentive pupils

Standing on one foot
in the rain
Who is to blame
Holding out a hand
for a dole
or..... for another hand
to hold
to help go
People just passing by
Looking away
To avoid
eye to meet eye
Who’s to blame?
We hide in shame.

Shell ✨🐚

A lost hungry vagrant
on a train to nowhere
everywhere's his home

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII🚂IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII­IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

     on a patch of hay
     in the heat of day
     he doesn't bother to get
     on his knees and pray

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII­IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII🚂IIIIIIIII
      
          everything he wants
          is in his sweat and blood
          the shirt on his back
          and his matter of fact

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII🚂IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII­IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

                                     ­          no one can touch his
                                               solitary freedom
                                               even when burdened with chains
                                               and in heavy rains

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII­IIIIIIIIIIII🚂IIIIIIIIIIIIII

                    he flies through time
                    known by himself
                    on a patch of hay

III🚂IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII­IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

        in an empty, lonely cart
        on a train to nowhere
        wandering the face of the earth

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII🚂IIIIIIIIIIIII­IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

yearning for Starlight💫

New York drowns in the California-made blue
The child of the voodoo kisses the sky
Her indigo ligaments are laid bare
While she falls, chasing smoking rabbits

She is small yet she soars
With her proportions falling on deaf heads
She remembers the knights of the dawn
Tangled in her gallivanting hair

Without knowing her doors
She noses her way through her window
The modest parachute travels
With the nomadic East

She recognizes heaven by taste
Knowing that she believes less and less
Seeing all without need for the travel
Ignoring the scrutiny of a gavel

Leaving in the morning
Not stopping until the fifth night
Learning for forty fortnights
Stopping to rest every second year

What a bright-eyed soul!
A sparkling visage
Adorning all her wanders
The world is at her command

I would rather
be a
wanderer
a belongerer
to no body
to no country
a loose end

​
than to bob
eagerly
at every tug
of the yarn's
end
whose
wound-up
mass
amasses me
a wriggled up
ball of
wriggles
​

I would rather
be alone
than
scooped up
in a basket
with others
of my
supposed
ilk
and held in
by the
over-under
wicker
edges
domed up
for containment
​

ominous
clicks and
scrapes
of my
destiny
clattering
and chattering
above
​

fraying
frizzled
frazzled bits
smoothing out
as my length
is tugged
up and up
like a long
slurpy
noodle
​

I would rather
be loose
and scrappy
and stumpy
and ragged
the one that
nobody loves
the discarded
refuse of a
more discerning
eye
​

than be made
surreptitiously
into somebody
else's
jumper




© 2017 Adelaide Heathfield

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

A man in a tailored suit
A man eating rotten fruit
One divorced three wives
Two contrasting lives

One is a lawyer
The other a beggar
I’m sure you think of the two of them,
One is a hundred times better

He’s in fine garments
The other’s worn and tattered
One’s dreams came true
The other one’s shattered

But none of that matters—why?
How ‘bout you ask us, the maggot and the fly
Because in the end —and we say this without shame
A vagrant and a lawyer in death both taste the same

The greyness will not go
From my mind, from the world
A dome of haze surrounds this troubled town
Dense, thick, ****** into the ground and out to the sky
From my soul, from the world
I'm not so far from sitting with the wild eyed vagrant
Watching all hope walk away
From my heart, from the world
A cruel twist of fate this is- when it began
Troubles came from a solution
From my pocket, from the world
Thanks to inefficiency, from the privileged
I have no food coming
From my hand, from the world
Dreams of warmth and meagre luxuries
Seem so distant, so impossible
From my head, from the world
If I can't survive this month on air
I shall go from my home
To the street, to the world.