San Francisco

The following is a peace I did that's meant to be read as a spoken word bit. It follows the idea of the being surrounded by humanity but feeling like it's broken and somehow distorted. I wrote the line "I feel like everyone here wants to rob me but they’d settle for telling me their life story" while walking through the city because it stood out as the truest possible thing about those walking all around me. There's something incredibly heartbreaking about standing around so many people who can be found everywhere get they're totally lost.

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San Francisco. The sun is high casting long shadows like dark funhouse mirror versions of my person on the littered pavement. The city here tingles with delicate beauty and an electric danger.

I feel like everyone here wants to rob me but they’d settle for telling me their life story.

Crazy homeless people seem to infest this city like fleas on a dog. Everyone is screaming opinions and nonsensical words to passersby. Stories in pretend languages are cried out like the world has ended and they’re the only ones who know. Joints are freely shared because incarceration means for one night a bed and a meal. Glances tell me that everyone here wants to avoid the harsh reality that they are all alone and surrounded simultaneously.

I watch as a frail Asian man drops breadcrumbs to the pigeons and seagulls and judging by the amount of bread that he’s brought I’m guessing this is a daily routine. His glasses balloon his eyes to comic proportions and I see written there like it’s been chiseled in stone that the world has not been kind to him and more than anything I want to give him a hug and tell him that although the bad outweighs the good in this world that joy exists like hidden glints of light off of murky puddles on the ground. He drops the breadcrumbs on the ground as close to his person as the birds will come. With a flick of his wrist he could end their lives but I’m guessing that it’s the closest contact he ever has with another living being. I watch men clutching trash bags that contain anything but.

People staring into empty space but I know that something dances before their eyes just out the field of our vision, on imaginary roads they traverse every day. The lilting jilting walk of unsteady legs transporting unsteady minds are prevalent throughout this city. Their brains are like puzzles, all the pieces accounted for but picture just isn’t complete.

I feel like everyone here wants to rob me but they’d settle for telling me their life story.

I watch as people talk to their dogs and the canines return the unintelligible syllables with looks of patience and understanding. People are shouting at strangers just to get reactions that prove their existence. Some men are walking with purpose, and others just walking to keep the earth spinning. I see a thousand faces I’ve seen before, and all of them are unfamiliar. I watch a man walking down the street dribbling a basketball that isn’t there. Based on his ill-fitting clothing and his lack of personal hygiene, I’m guessing that eye contact is a precious commodity that he isn’t often afforded.

Men and women are desperate to tell me how the world works and the longer I listen the more reason I see in their madness. I eavesdrop on a one sided conversation a woman has with a brother that died a long time ago. She points a dirty finger and accuses him of molesting her and ruining her life, then with real tears for a fake brother she forgives him and I can only wonder if she got the privilege to tell him all those things while he still traversed this world.

If home is where the heart is then I suspect that these people here are having an out of body experience.

I see a man tell a dirty joke in a forgiven language to no one and everyone.

Do these people know that they matter? Do they know that they exist? If one of them dies will there be anyone to carry on the memory of the fallen? God, do they know that they’re loved? It’s gut-wrenching to see people with stories of anguish and lies, stories that will never be told wandering the streets like tumbleweeds in a high wind. I would ask but I’m not sure I’m fluent enough in the tongue of insanity to make sense of the gibberish responses.

 If we are dwelling in a sea of humanity then these people are goldfishes.

A dime a dozen and passed over by society.

How does God judge those that don’t exist in this physical world, but rather exist in a mental state of confusion? Gently I hope. They’ll die with no headstone and no mourners. Can we restore these people simply by making them feel loved?

I read a book once where a man wrote that we are defined by those that love us. If that’s true then that wide chasm we believe separates us from the bums is but a small step filled with heartbreak. It’s promises made but never kept. It’s hurt that’s never had a chance to heal. It’s disappointment without relief that has turned these people’s minds into the soup they stand in line for.

I feel like everyone here wants to rob me but they’d settle for telling me their life story.

They come to me with outstretched hands accidentally asking for the one thing they need most, change. The sad thing is that I possess the key to the change they so desperately need and I carry it with me almost daily but the only time I really use it is for trivia, or to prove a point in an argument, or when I want to appear righteous. It’s a book that is full of divine truth that is all too often overlooked and always taken for granted by those with easy access to it. The people here need to be told that they are loved by the author of that book because until they understood that they are precious and have worth they’re just lost sheep caught out in the harsh weather of indifference.

My porcelain heart breaks again for these people who live under the lie that they are not important.

 If the road to hell is paved with good intentions then the road to heaven must be paved with acts of faith.

We can choose to ignore what’s going on but a spade is a spade and ignorance is just ignorance. Anyone who calls it bliss is too foolish to appreciate bliss.

I see a man pull a lamp from a trash pile and like the lamp can no longer, his face lights up. Deep wrinkle lines in his face battered by too much substance abuse showed me a map of happiness not often expressed. “I’ve found stuff like and sold it at pawn shops for $600”, he tells me because my look of amusement at his antics shows that I’m aware his heart still beats. I smile and don’t say that I’m sure he’ll spend the money on this that will quicken death’s inevitable march. He keeps smiling and showing the other vagrants and I’m almost jealous that one man could divine such pleasure from a forgotten lamp.

I feel like everyone here wants to rob me but they’d settle for telling me their life story.