Homelessness Poem

Hypothetically speaking, if

Poverty is an institution  

Created to perpetuate the illusion that equality is fair game

And everyone has identical exposure to opportunities but

Its circumstance and motivation that aren't the same

Would you change your mind about what you deserve?

Let public opinion deceive you into believing that you’re a degenerate statistic and only want people to hand you a second chance without so much as a broken back to prove you’re willing to work for it

How much would it take to convince you?

That you aren’t worth the ground you sleep on, that others will not go out of their way

And that any government assistance that is available is locked away, waiting for someone who isn't a felon

But your caseworker never bothered to ask you,

because if he had,

you would have told him that you only did it because you had too,

Palms covered in Band-Aids from attempting to pull yourself out of the hole you dug yourself into, and you’ll admit to it, because you’re not exempt from making mistakes but sometimes all it takes is someone considerate,

With a listening ear

Look at him without fear, like a person and not a liability, he is not your property used to accrue the wealth that you’ll only share for tax write offs in late May

he is your

Local Neighborhood Street wanderer

That man your daughter stares at as you clinch her hand tighter when you walk by without eye contact because your guilt would compel you to do something because we are built that way, ignoring it allows our hearts to decay

Because it is in all of us to make our arms parallel to the ground and reach out when we see tears fall from wounded eyes

But the media has left us deprived of perspective. It’s merely a hypothetical of course

Just some thoughts my mind wondered by when I bought a guy a subway sandwich and he told me he couldn’t work because no one would hire him because he had an enlarged heart and 1 lung

That he served in Vietnam twice and that he had been waiting on his disability for the last 3 years, subjected to the life of a caveman living in the woods while sleeping in a hut built of what he could find behind the rest of us, his dreams have been repressed to simply wanting clean water

I’m just saying ya’ll, I realized

Every conclusion I drew, was based on an invalid presumption about something someone else didn’t understand

And I didn’t bother to ask any questions and like you, never reach out my hand

Left me to believe that this generalized group of people all thought the same way when in fact none of us are all the same, everyone is an individual and everyone has a different story, what we all have in common is pain

And I guess that’s why this is just a hypothetically, because I know if this was true we would do so much better than allow ourselves to slowly un-glue the intimate fibers that keep us humble because of something insipid like social status

The simplicity of love can be overwhelming sometimes and I know

That we are not that indifferent to each other’s struggle, we are not so cold that giving the scarf off our neck would cause frost bite to warmness of our hearts that shout I care about you, we can’t be because if we were, this poem wouldn't be a hypothetical

It would be the truth, and it’s ugly

By Renay