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Bill Watkins, Traveling Poet

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Bill Watkins, Traveling Poet

Category Archives: Homeless

What Homeless Problem? Leaders Scapegoat the Poor Instead of Tackling Development’s Filth

05 Friday Nov 2021

Posted by Bill Watkins in Homeless, Los Angeles, Poetic Blog, Political, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Joy, LAPD, Los Angeles, Love, Peace

Homeless2

-by Bill Watkins 10/27/2021

The problems of “Los Angeles” run deep, as deep as the rivers and lakes that used to bless this land before the great European conquest.

It used to be a land of many names to many tribes.  By any name naturally sweet, especially when compared to what we industrialists have done to it.  Litter spews out of sidewalks’ cracks, asphalt trying to make all accessible to earth-burning cars, elected leaders in suits meeting in grand halls making and spending money…

Then we are appalled “at that bum on the corner.”  At all the trash, the smell of urine, RV’s mounting months of rentless stays, providing homes to some and eyesores to others – those enclosed in business attire at stationary houses, nine to five jobs shaking their heads…  “Let’s have a meeting about the homeless!!” they hurl, as the trash mounts.

Did anyone ever think we should just pick up the trash?  Daily?  And not just in gas-guzzling trucks, but on foot?  Los Angeles has forgotten how to walk!  LAPD, since the 1960’s, has even decided to police by helicopter!  Never mind the noise, the sound of war…  There they are because you forgot to lock your deified car, someone stole it, and now we add the second crime of noise pollution from above to stop the theft!

I call for a return to Otsungna.  Yaangna, or whichever the names were before the Spanish and their guns stole land and branded it angelic with their bibles.  We have failed.  We have desecrated.  We have polluted…  And now it’s the fault of poor people?  People who look to a blessed outdoor life?  Sleeping under the stars?

In this formerly peaceful, natural space the conquerors called Los Angeles I don’t see a homeless problem.  I see a filth problem, and lazy leaders getting rich in suits who haven’t the slightest idea how to get out of their SUV’s, put on some work clothes, go out on foot –

and solve it.

One Man

04 Thursday Nov 2021

Posted by Bill Watkins in Homeless, Poem, Poetic Blog, Poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Christian, Christianity, Gospel, Gospels, Homeless, Homelessness, Humanity, Joy, Love, Peace, Poem, Poems, Poetry

Homeless1

He had lost half his nose,
the right side of his face
marred by the streets.

His eye on that side
bloodshot.  Barely here,
laid out across a driveway—

Concrete and asphalt his
best friends, along with
the devil alcohol…

Near naked, shoeless,
writhing on the ground for
traffic to finish off,

I asked him if he needed
help… He groggily said “yes,”
I called 911, waited, then

watched as paramedics
kindly carted him away for
a short or final rest, who

can say?  He was not really
another man, he was me.

He was a man, like me.  He
could have been me, a
long-lost brother.

He bled red like me, a thin
line of it glowing where his
nose used to be whole.

A red eye like mine, skin
and sweat… Was he ever in
a sandbox at school?

Branded homeless by the suits,
a “problem” by them and
others, when really…

He’s just a man like you
with a disease.  One man,
barely breathing, hoping

for something good, some
moment of light before
the end to signify forever.

We are here, equal.  None
better than another.  This
man was me.  You…

Our job to love him as
we love ourselves, remember?

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