The Homeless

constructive criticism always welcome

The homeless is
 the apotheosis of wrinkles
That all swerve to figure
 a winter flower on her hands,
quivering in fear
that the coat is buttonless
and two sizes bigger
than her body
and the rest
is cold space
of apathy.

Reviews

[Pól]

a beautiful poem and a beautiful review by Circe

[Circe]

wow... this is enough to send chills through me... from the wrinkles to the winter flower quivering in fear.. you capture that soulfulness... and the essence of desolation it seems.. those fears manifested to the absence of comfort.. tragic.. and you wonder about apathy and all the things that are so disturbing about the world.. and that feeling is bottled into this nucleus of the coat that wasn't meant to fit her... you create intuitiveness and deep gnawing feelings... that go far beyond words!

[Marri]

Thank you! It was provoked by an interesting essay by Patrick Decklerck who analyses the unnecessary suffering of the homeless...His discussion is undoubtedly profound and shifts our perspective. At least it did so with mine. It added a whole new dimension to my compassion....

[Marri]

PS: your interpretation sounds more like poetry than my own attempt. You can't escape from your own talent!

[Circe]

ohhh wow.. I haven't read any essays in a long time... you're so learned!!! what are the main findings of his essay?

haha no, your poem is the bombshell here!!!

[Marri]

learned, no, but curious, always :) The essay is long, but one of the ideas is that homelessness is like madness, it is a mental condition, and giving someone a roof above their head doesn't help, and they soon end up on the street anyway. Or another concept is that we need to punish those who mock normality, those who don't live like us...‘Homeless people confront us with the scandal of extreme masochism. Theirs, it seems, is the perverseness of those who prefer the worst. It is as if they actually wanted to suffer…’

‘like all mad people, homeless people are very precious, both for the questions they raise and for the mockery they make of our aspirations. They show us the dark side of ourselves, the one that we do not want to be reminded of, the negative within us. We hate their guts for it. That is why we devise a system of social health and medicine for the homeless, a whole paraphernalia of help provision, that is and is intended to be structurally inadequate. Let me quote, as one example of this, a document I have obtained from the Head Office of the Department for Social and Sanitary Affairs in Paris. This document defines the conditions under which emergency shelters for the homeless are to be opened in the winter months. The conditions are as follows: ‘The night temperature must attain minus 2 degrees centigrade, and the day temperature must stay beneath plus 2 degrees centigrade, unless there are aggravating factors such as snow, rain, and wind. Weather forecasts for the next few days and nights must also be taken into account.’ This is fundamental anthropological document because it candidly sets what might be called a thermal limit to the social contract…Presumably, if emergency shelters are to be opened at all during cold weather, their aim must be to prevent the onset of hypothermia in homeless people.’ But ‘for the undernourished, ill-dressed and exhausted, hypothermia is a real possibility from 15-16 centigrade onwards. So this document has nothing to do with hypothermia. It has to do with us: it is an attempt to calculate what the well-dressed, well-fed, and well-rested perceive as cold weather.’ The same is valid for the Restaurants of the Heart (free food for homeless) which are open six months of the year. So, we acknowledge that the homeless are hungry for the first six months, but then let them starve for the next six..

[Marri]

‘I had a patient once whose name was L’Angoisse (Anguish). L’Angoisse had an ulcer that had eaten away most of his skin between his knee and his ankle. He had to be hospitalized on several occasions. When he came to our medical services, he was invariably dirty and his ulcer was infested with maggots. The doctor used to say to him: ‘Why don’t you try and keel the flies off your ulcer? The flies lay eggs, and the eggs become maggots.’ L’Angoisse replied that he did not believe him. So one day the doctor decided to show him that what he had said was true. He took some of the maggots out of the patient’s ulcer, put them in a box, and a few days later the maggots became flies. One seeing this, L’Angoisse said to the doctor: ‘Those are my flies, aren’t they? Would you keep them safe for me?’ We duly preserved them in alcohol. In the course of the following weeks, L’Angoisse visited the hospital again and again, and each time he said to us: ‘Would you let me play with my children?’ This is horrendous story. It is indecent, degrading, and thoroughly mad. But it also carries the distant echo of a fundamental human urge: to live on after one’s own death, to give life to something else, be it dead flies. It is only by understanding the fundamental humanity that we share with chronically homeless people that we can hope to give them the respect they deserve. The responsibility is ours alone. It means saying of L’Angoisse what Prospero says of Caliban:’ This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine’.'

[Marri]

I apologise for the length of the quotes. The essay is very interesting and sums up a book by Decklerck: 'The Shipwrecked' (unfortunately, I haven't found it translated in English)...He worked and lived among the homeless for fifteen years and his discussion is as shocking as it sounds honest, he doesn't write from the pedastal of well-nourished, well-dressed, well-educated man, but hides a very compassionate attempt to understand those different from us...

[Circe]

that is amazing Marri.... very very interesting... I think a lot of homeless people are mentally ill... and the psychiatric hospitals are no good for them.. those places are horrible places.. inhumane really... and where do they end up when the system has no room for them, no place... on the streets.... and society has no tolerance for them.. it is truly sad.. I like what you said about compassion and the quote about living on after one's own death... it's the consciousness reacting its natural way..... it is so terrible that we can't take care of the most vulnerable sector of society... your quotes were an eye-opener, some amazing insights I've never heard of!

[Marri]

hm, Serah, I read the essay in completely different way. He condemns the social system which excludes the homeless and uses them as an example and a threat: if you don't work, you see, you can reach this. And I understood his writing as a strong reaction against those who think that chronically homeless people have chosen this voluntarely. I think he sees it more as a condition, which can only be escaped by mutual help and understanding...I don't know whether you've read the whole essay, but for me, Decklerck puts some light on things never mentioned before. And a homeless person for him is not a 'tramp' which fell out of society out of lazyness to keep up with 'normal life'...and living among them, I guess, gives him a certain edge in his own observations...I am sorry that the quotes I used shattered your heart

[Marri]

yes, the essay was an eye-opener for me too...Decklerck says that he began dealing with the subject scientifically, but realised he could never reach some kind of understanding of homelessness sitting behind his desk, so he began living with them for a while (that;s what my broken french translates)... It's a chilling read, at least for me...Thank you for taking the time to read them, I know i digressed here

[Marri]

I am sorry that you saw it this way. Perhaps the excerpts don't reflect the anger at societies who can shelter homeless people only for a few nights and leave them roofless for the rest of the time, or who can feed them only half an year and forget about the other half. His voice, is academic, to that I admit, but I found anger and compassion in his essay. I am sorry that it is heartbreaking for you. My family has been expirienced both (the cancer, and the poverty and not knowing what you are going to eat the next day, and the forced diets), so I can relate to your personal tragedies well. Unfortunately, such tragedies are realities for many of us. Stories such as that of your helping mother are stories of hope

[I Shred This Cabbage]

well said serah. i agree with everything you assert here.

circe, i don't know why you think that, 'a lot of homeless people are mentally ill...' or 'psychiatric hospitals are psychiatric hospitals are horrible..... inhumane places' is this based on experience? becuase my experiences are quite the opposite.

[Circe]

well actually it is based on homeless people that I've come in contact with, since a very young age.... and the psychiatric hospitals there were very basic, they did not treat patients well.... perhaps it is different in your country.

[Circe]

I'm sorry but I have to add.... a few people in my family have committed suicide due to inadequate care from mental health facilities... so I suppose that's the experience...

[I Shred This Cabbage]

circe, you must appreciate that you are talking to people from various countries; from the first world to the third.

[Circe]

ahhh I apologise for not catering to first world sensibilities.

[I Shred This Cabbage]

actually I was suggesting quite the opposite, i believe you are not catering for third world sensibilites. circe, I'm not trying to fight with you, I'm only trying to find out why you hold that opinion. I'm sorry but I believe it is a sweeping generalisation and a dangerous one at that.

[Marri]

Not from personal experince, but from reliable source, a friend who works with them: people on the street suffer all kind of tragedies apart from cold and hunger. Homeless women are raped or beaten up, and as in every layer of society there are monsters and there are victims. So, I think this is what makes Circe talk about inhumane places. Where I come from, the case with orphanages is similar. And I don't understand why people label madness as so negative, in such a world I will prosaicly quote this shabby overused phrase: it is not normal to be normal in such a world, accepting the world as normal is perhaps more mad, because the horrors that happen around us are anything but normal. Mental illness is a condition far more preferable for me than cold-heartedness and apathy. I apologise if my words caused so much misunderstanding

[Circe]

thanks Marri... that is more than eloquent..

[I Shred This Cabbage]

hi marri. the inhumane reference was to 'psychiatric hospitals' not the streets, which are of course inhumane places, not just for homeless people. Well said regarding, I don't understand why people label madness as so negative, in such a world I will prosaicly quote this shabby overused phrase: it is not normal to be normal in such a world, accepting the world as normal is perhaps more mad, because the horrors that happen around us are anything but normal. Mental illness is a condition far more preferable for me than cold-heartedness and apathy. I apologise if my words caused so much misunderstanding '. Do you know there was a study wherein it showed that people suffering depression will function better in a crisis than someone without such an ailment because they are already expecting it.

[Circe]

I'm going to stop commenting here because I don't want to spoil the lovely poem with misunderstandings. Send to my email if you want to direct anything at me.

[Marri]

no, serah, I haven't been labeled as mentally ill, but that I am mad, most of the people who know me would agree. But I have had enough traumatic experiences which will take a whole life to overcome, and with this I don't look for compassion, but I think it enough to unite me with the majority of the world. Everyone with their own pains and sorrows. I romanticise poverty as well, although I have been through it almost all my childhood. And yet, to tell you the truth, i was far happier with my mother and sister in our romanticised poverty, than at yesterday's Christmas party from work, where the food didn't taste, the food, I have never bought for myself and my family wouldn't imagine, the piece of bread tasted a million times better shared with the ones I loved. But that's a small mysery in comparison with what people live with. My 'romanticising' hardships is part of my character, part of my survival instinct to find something good in the darkest of times. La vita e bella, have you seen it? Some of us are like lotus flowers, they grow in mud, the dirtier the mud, the more beautiful they grow. So, I guess, it takes enormous human belief in hope to wink shortly before you die (reference to the movie) and hold onto what fills us with light

[Pól]

I think everyone would be best advised to allow Serah to retreat to the light that she lives in where hopefully she will stay so that we will not have to endure any more of her ridiculous ranting.

[Pól]

u really are insane

[Pól]

As usual you have lauched into an abusive tirade against anyone who doesn't agree with u. This from the preson who claims;


she respects each and every human being -lol
has love inher heart- yeah right!!
tells others tothink before making generalizations
chides others to be sensitive to each person... your about as sensitive as a sledge hammer
warns others not to brand anyone unless qualified to do so - lmfao
sexpertise as well as a genuine understanding of human nature... you could have fooled me love
is sensitive to those who are less fortunate- sure!!
has a little girl prankster heart - I'll let others be the judge of that.

I will dare to speak and a worthless piece of s**t like you won't bully me into submission. I would advise you to desist from yourranting, lest I decide to sue you for defamation.

My advice to you is to go back underneath whatever rock u crawled from and stop annoying people with ur ridiculous nonsense

[Pól]

Sorry, Marri that your beautiful poem has been hijacked like this>

[.]

You're right. I'm extremely sorry to all of you. So, I'm deleting all my comments.

[Pól]

Thats a bit late now given the outrageous comments you had on this site for everyone to read for quite some time. I'm not sure if your apology extended to me, but if it did I certainly do not accept it, and I shall be considering with my legal advisors what further action I should take.

[I Shred This Cabbage]

Serah, I won't be deleting my comments. I have no need to. If Marri wants to delete my comments she is free to. I wouldn't be offended.

[Marri]

Ok, my imagination can only draw rainbows over 'this comment has been deleted by poster' and I have no idea what was said here. The truth is I don't believe in censure so I won't be deleting any comments or poems. I stand by what I said. It pains me to see Circe's deleted comment, as I found her remarks truly thought-provoking and intiquing, and I would like to keep her comments. And I honestly think that deleting her words is choping a valuable piece off, so I can only regret that the pure emotional manipulation got the best of it all. Serah, no need to delete your comments, too, I value tolerance and respect more those of different opinion who can hold it than those who are ashamed of it. No worries about the discussion, among all things said may be lays some kind of understanding unspoiled by rants and judgments. To those who take this too deeply, I would suggest a deep breath and a walk in the park

[.]

I'm extremely sorry to all on this thread. I deeply regret all my comments.