HOMELESSNESS

The broken people

Hold crude signs on street corners

Waiting for small change.

They haunt me wherever I go.

On street corners, in doorways,

at stop lights, in the coffee shop,

young, old, battered women,

beaten men, howling to the wind,

muttering, mentally ill, drunk, dirty,

high, low, pushing shopping carts ,

sleeping in doorways, holding signs,

holding cups, holding hope, hopeless,

wild, calm, passive, depressed, belligerent,

obsessive, sweet, swollen, torn, barefoot,

toothless, bent, spent, broken.

http://www.alphaproject.org/