Why lie?... I want a beer
Went to a church for the homeless last Friday and found myself crying and laughing more than I have in a long time...mostly humbled that those who beg and hide in shadows for all of their lives, could teach me so much about humour, about peace, about having nothing yet posessing everything. They are the people with enough pain to send a complaint to God...but they don't, gracefully they accept what they have been given. After it finished I went down stairs onto a Surry Hills side street and was struck by the contrast. I wrote this about it afterward
Spirited faces emerge from cracked bodies,
ones with the weight to judge accept the rod
open-handed
Loveless faces draw their warmth
in a small upstairs room
While on cool streets below
spread out depressants in high end pent frocks
hurry to bottles of wine
and frown at the images sitting under walls
frown at the dark shadows
these images of their very pain
Mirror me, mirror our high-end pain
and inside we too are the toothless, the trodden
cupboards and pill-filled cabinets keep us white
keep us starched; but parched
we hope to keep
our homelessness at bay
and desperateness presses us
against it's shining glass
so marked we scrub the evidence away
and talk about the weather
AEM 2009
Spirited faces emerge from cracked bodies,
ones with the weight to judge accept the rod
open-handed
Loveless faces draw their warmth
in a small upstairs room
While on cool streets below
spread out depressants in high end pent frocks
hurry to bottles of wine
and frown at the images sitting under walls
frown at the dark shadows
these images of their very pain
Mirror me, mirror our high-end pain
and inside we too are the toothless, the trodden
cupboards and pill-filled cabinets keep us white
keep us starched; but parched
we hope to keep
our homelessness at bay
and desperateness presses us
against it's shining glass
so marked we scrub the evidence away
and talk about the weather
AEM 2009