homeless. thats what i was. how it came to this? i dont know either. but what does it matter? my hands were numb and frostbitten in the cold windy. the snowflakes dances across my face and my hair entangles them. my grey eyes wandered across the streets to the people scurrying across with scarves flying like tails behind them.
Elizabeth
Vagrant. Thats what they call me. Like I’m some vile creature. I’m just trash. Tossed out. Unloved, unwanted. Dirty. No. Filthy. A cause of disgust.
Elizabeth
Abandoned. Hurt. Alone.
Loneliness.
That’s a hard place to be. In the depths of loneliness.
Sort of like there’s this great big looming grey cloud over you just nagging and pulling at you. Never quite letting you enjoy the shards of serenity you’re able to scrape at.
The streets have been tough to you, but you know how to get by now. You know the song the footsteps pound on the concrete and the hustle and bustle of traffic. You know the best places to sleep and where to find food. You know what kind of people will listen to your plight and what kind of people will walk on.
You don’t know how to leave.
Xalts
If you’ve no place to live, this is what you become. You’re destitute, if you live in this economy and have no job and sometimes this will happen to you. Gimme shelter. If you’ve used up all of your money and they evict you, this is what happens. Many are happy in this place though. Some prefer to live like this, they don’t want handouts. Skid row for example is the home for these people.
April
“Don’t look at me,” she said, wringing her greasy hair out in disgust. “I practically look homeless.”
no place to live. destitute, no shelter, gimme shelter, people in this economy without jobs, this is what you do when there is nowhere else to go.
April
so many people like me, so many opportunities taken or missed or lost altogether, so many paths diverging and changing and crossing and disappearing. I always feel like I’m just three steps away. Friends in trouble scare me to death. Anxiety over things in a nebulous vision.
K
Who are the truly homeless? Those, it seems, who have no true family to rely on, to love, to talk to and support. Those who are unwanted in a home. Those who don’t belong with others. Those who are not loved….yes, the unloved, I think, are truly the ones with no home.
Fay
When one is homeless the world is constantly viewing them. Judging them as if the person who is without a home is compleatly at fault for the situation they are in. If one is homeless it does not merely mean they are lazy or unable to help themselves.
Tess
the man looked up at me expectantly.
“you do have more food, right?” he said, gesturing to his family.
I stumbled over my words and eventually handed over the ball of food. “i… can get more,” i said, slightly annoyed.
callie
I’ve been homeless for almost 3 years. Not “living on the street” homeless, but not having my own home. Crashing on friends’ couches, sometimes going home with someone I barely know. But I refuse to sleep outside like a dog. I may be poor, but I will keep the meager shreds of dignity I can.
Even for a day being homeless seemed life shattering. He wondered how anyone could do it for a month or even a year. It saddened him. He had
June
I once came across a homeless man, who begged for change on his knees. Not the change that can buy you things- but things like world peace and forgiveness. I listened to this mans words as his beard grew long and wrinkles engraved my face. When he died I embossed his gravestone with, “Keep your coins, I want change.” I will never forget that homeless man.
Hannah
I know an old homeless man who lives in the dark alley from me. He was incredibly gross, but I know the old man couldn’t help himself. He was tall, about six foot, and not very pleasant looking. Not even the bugs waned to be around him. He slept on the ground, near the creek, and ate whatever he could find, left in the trashcans on the Main streets.
Hanna
This scared little child looks at me and I do not see danger, I do not see a thief that would come into my home. Maybe that is foolish, it probably is, but it doesn’t matter to me. I am a person ruled by emotion and if I should not indulge, what is the point?
Are these conflicting thoughts and emotions the things I am supposed to feel? I don’t miss it and yet I yearn for what I’ve never known. I don’t know how to make sense of something that is so close, yet so far.
I will miss them. I can’t believe they cast me out. But in the same breath, I am free. I am no longer bound by their ties, be it physical, mental, spiritual or otherwise. I am now me.
I am homeless.
But not heartless. Perhaps that is where the difference lies.
And there they were, on the road; not quite the road, more slouched over the curb. One in a suit, one a woman, one a drunk. 40 seconds it took for someone to notice the first, 4 minutes the second, 30 the third. And we thought society had evolved since Kitty G. The homeless need hope, but social conformity is too strong
Amanda Menas
Sleeping in a ditch isn’t so bad…
Having no home isn’t so bad
Wandering from place to place really isn’t so bad…..
It’s the looks I get from people
The whispers from parents
“Oh don’t go near that man”
The assumption that I’m somehow more dangerous
More likely to strike
When in reality,
I am more docile than most
Of the people that you have running the show
The ones who took my home and my freedom away.
That’s what is bad about being homeless.
There were so many things that the kids at school talked about that he didn’t understand. They seemed so… limited. Their homes were constant, unchanging, unyielding things.
i drove past a man today baking in the sun like a shortbread cookie. i drove home but slowly came back. i brought him water and a fig breakfast bar. i told him he looked dehydrated but he just smiled up at me with grass clinging to his cheeks and said, “many blessings to you,”.
homelessness is the idea white girls have when they go on bus tours in third world countries and give nostalgic sidewards glances to clouded power lines. homelessness is about can I have a cigarette, and do you want to have some of this. Male and female gritty throats in outlying counties.
Funny that yesterday’s word now threatens me with today’s topic. The bills have piled and I have no way to keep sane. I am unstable. Can’t keep job. Can’t keep head straight. Broken. Like the friendship I once cherished. He did this to me. And I was too loyal to tell. Loyalty is overrated.
she sat on the dirty sidewalk as a loud, glittering bus pulled up in front of her. out of it poured skinny girls with platform shoes and boys with button up shirts and ties, laughing too loudly, shrieking like dying birds, flowing out onto the street that wasn’t their home.
Homeless people make me sad. Like I feel bad for what I have. I don’t know, I just wish I could feed them and clothe them and give them shelter. The struggle is real.
Alixlegreat
Homeless is a subjective term
Although I have a roof over my head
Without you here
There is no comfort of home
I desperately desire your arms
For they are my shelter
Sarah
Where the brave are presently, and where everyone will end up, if they keep taking lower paying jobs offered by big business.
Jeff
Needing love
wanting a friend
Has no place
to call his own.
Lives alone
on the streets
called a bum,
lives with cold feet.
All he wants is a place
a simple place
to call his own.
Home.
It was this bone-weary feeling that kept me moving. See, I knew. I knew if I let myself stop at all, I’d never move again. As bad as I had it… it wasn’t as bad as the boys. They were living under an overpass when I’d found them. Seemed so silly to be angry at them for stealing an empty wallet when they were starving to death. At least their mother had worked herself into the grave before this had happened to them. Mine was either in a drunken stupor or lashing out at me for driving Daddy Dearest away.
My arms hurt. My jaw was raw from the concrete I’d landed on (jaw broke my fall despite the flailing of my arms). I’d jumped out a two story window just to make it to work on time… but I’d rather chew aluminum before I brought my boys some supper. Maternal instincts? Oh hell no. That would require feelings of some sort. No, this was spite. Pure and simple.
He shivers in the snow, not sure where his next meal will come from. It’s cold, so cold that his hands feel frozen. The shelter down the road is full this time of year, or he’d swallow his pride and ask for their help. Maybe they could give him a home tomorrow night.
Ed Sheeran wasn’t really homeless. He had never been. But he’d heard from a woman in the shelter about her life and couldn’t help but write about it. But home was something Ed was very familiar with. From his mom’s home cooking to the view out his bedroom window, it was all familiar. That was what home should be.
Michaela
imagine wandering around with no centre. your concentric circles just centre around your nomadic soul instead of from your front door… your axle is eternally wandering, cold and tired.
esme
you gotta help the homeless. “help the homeless?” “money to feed the homeless?” we always shake our heads, tight-lipped smile… a fake look, trying to forget they’re human. but they are. aren’t they?
esme
I went to the homeless shelter the other day. What I saw there disheartened me, but I needed to see it. It was definitely hard to see, but seeing all these people without homes to call their own, without a safe haven for their family to be together, and without many of the modern conveniences and comforts that I enjoy today, I almost wanted to cry. I wanted to give them my home.
Julie Britt
I saw the man hunched over by the side of the road. I didn’t think about him much. Just passed him by. I really wish I could’ve seen his potential in life. Like how 20 years later he could be in that one movie that everyone liked and you saw his face everywhere.
Ghosts, sticking out their hands to you, but you draw away as if they are trying to drag you down to Hell. You thought you recognized one long ago so now you avert your gaze. If you don’t look, they don’t exist, and they will fade into the concrete, disappear behind the bustle of the busy street.
But remember this: late some night, once you’ve closed your eyes and slowed your breathing, after you’ve pulled the covers up to your chin and stretched your legs far down the cool sheets — then you will think of them again, and they will haunt you.
Don’t let the bear be homeless. Let it come in, out of the rain. Let it sit at your desk, and rumple your pets, let the bear come in. If you’ve got some teA brewing, give him a spoonful of that. If you’ve got fish in the oven, let him have some of that, too.
homeless. thats what i was. how it came to this? i dont know either. but what does it matter? my hands were numb and frostbitten in the cold windy. the snowflakes dances across my face and my hair entangles them. my grey eyes wandered across the streets to the people scurrying across with scarves flying like tails behind them.
Vagrant. Thats what they call me. Like I’m some vile creature. I’m just trash. Tossed out. Unloved, unwanted. Dirty. No. Filthy. A cause of disgust.
Abandoned. Hurt. Alone.
Loneliness.
That’s a hard place to be. In the depths of loneliness.
Sort of like there’s this great big looming grey cloud over you just nagging and pulling at you. Never quite letting you enjoy the shards of serenity you’re able to scrape at.
It’s been three years now, but you don’t mind. You can get by.
That’s a lie. But you smile and nod and stay positive anyway. You won’t get anywhere by crying.
That’s a lie. You want to cry all the time. You hate your life. But you’re fine. You can smile.
That’s a lie.
The streets have been tough to you, but you know how to get by now. You know the song the footsteps pound on the concrete and the hustle and bustle of traffic. You know the best places to sleep and where to find food. You know what kind of people will listen to your plight and what kind of people will walk on.
You don’t know how to leave.
If you’ve no place to live, this is what you become. You’re destitute, if you live in this economy and have no job and sometimes this will happen to you. Gimme shelter. If you’ve used up all of your money and they evict you, this is what happens. Many are happy in this place though. Some prefer to live like this, they don’t want handouts. Skid row for example is the home for these people.
“Don’t look at me,” she said, wringing her greasy hair out in disgust. “I practically look homeless.”
no place to live. destitute, no shelter, gimme shelter, people in this economy without jobs, this is what you do when there is nowhere else to go.
so many people like me, so many opportunities taken or missed or lost altogether, so many paths diverging and changing and crossing and disappearing. I always feel like I’m just three steps away. Friends in trouble scare me to death. Anxiety over things in a nebulous vision.
Who are the truly homeless? Those, it seems, who have no true family to rely on, to love, to talk to and support. Those who are unwanted in a home. Those who don’t belong with others. Those who are not loved….yes, the unloved, I think, are truly the ones with no home.
When one is homeless the world is constantly viewing them. Judging them as if the person who is without a home is compleatly at fault for the situation they are in. If one is homeless it does not merely mean they are lazy or unable to help themselves.
the man looked up at me expectantly.
“you do have more food, right?” he said, gesturing to his family.
I stumbled over my words and eventually handed over the ball of food. “i… can get more,” i said, slightly annoyed.
I’ve been homeless for almost 3 years. Not “living on the street” homeless, but not having my own home. Crashing on friends’ couches, sometimes going home with someone I barely know. But I refuse to sleep outside like a dog. I may be poor, but I will keep the meager shreds of dignity I can.
Even for a day being homeless seemed life shattering. He wondered how anyone could do it for a month or even a year. It saddened him. He had
I once came across a homeless man, who begged for change on his knees. Not the change that can buy you things- but things like world peace and forgiveness. I listened to this mans words as his beard grew long and wrinkles engraved my face. When he died I embossed his gravestone with, “Keep your coins, I want change.” I will never forget that homeless man.
I know an old homeless man who lives in the dark alley from me. He was incredibly gross, but I know the old man couldn’t help himself. He was tall, about six foot, and not very pleasant looking. Not even the bugs waned to be around him. He slept on the ground, near the creek, and ate whatever he could find, left in the trashcans on the Main streets.
This scared little child looks at me and I do not see danger, I do not see a thief that would come into my home. Maybe that is foolish, it probably is, but it doesn’t matter to me. I am a person ruled by emotion and if I should not indulge, what is the point?
Homeless. Drifting. Empty. Purposed.
Are these conflicting thoughts and emotions the things I am supposed to feel? I don’t miss it and yet I yearn for what I’ve never known. I don’t know how to make sense of something that is so close, yet so far.
I will miss them. I can’t believe they cast me out. But in the same breath, I am free. I am no longer bound by their ties, be it physical, mental, spiritual or otherwise. I am now me.
I am homeless.
But not heartless. Perhaps that is where the difference lies.
And there they were, on the road; not quite the road, more slouched over the curb. One in a suit, one a woman, one a drunk. 40 seconds it took for someone to notice the first, 4 minutes the second, 30 the third. And we thought society had evolved since Kitty G. The homeless need hope, but social conformity is too strong
Sleeping in a ditch isn’t so bad…
Having no home isn’t so bad
Wandering from place to place really isn’t so bad…..
It’s the looks I get from people
The whispers from parents
“Oh don’t go near that man”
The assumption that I’m somehow more dangerous
More likely to strike
When in reality,
I am more docile than most
Of the people that you have running the show
The ones who took my home and my freedom away.
That’s what is bad about being homeless.
There were so many things that the kids at school talked about that he didn’t understand. They seemed so… limited. Their homes were constant, unchanging, unyielding things.
i drove past a man today baking in the sun like a shortbread cookie. i drove home but slowly came back. i brought him water and a fig breakfast bar. i told him he looked dehydrated but he just smiled up at me with grass clinging to his cheeks and said, “many blessings to you,”.
homelessness is the idea white girls have when they go on bus tours in third world countries and give nostalgic sidewards glances to clouded power lines. homelessness is about can I have a cigarette, and do you want to have some of this. Male and female gritty throats in outlying counties.
Funny that yesterday’s word now threatens me with today’s topic. The bills have piled and I have no way to keep sane. I am unstable. Can’t keep job. Can’t keep head straight. Broken. Like the friendship I once cherished. He did this to me. And I was too loyal to tell. Loyalty is overrated.
she sat on the dirty sidewalk as a loud, glittering bus pulled up in front of her. out of it poured skinny girls with platform shoes and boys with button up shirts and ties, laughing too loudly, shrieking like dying birds, flowing out onto the street that wasn’t their home.
Homeless people make me sad. Like I feel bad for what I have. I don’t know, I just wish I could feed them and clothe them and give them shelter. The struggle is real.
Homeless is a subjective term
Although I have a roof over my head
Without you here
There is no comfort of home
I desperately desire your arms
For they are my shelter
Where the brave are presently, and where everyone will end up, if they keep taking lower paying jobs offered by big business.
Needing love
wanting a friend
Has no place
to call his own.
Lives alone
on the streets
called a bum,
lives with cold feet.
All he wants is a place
a simple place
to call his own.
Home.
It was this bone-weary feeling that kept me moving. See, I knew. I knew if I let myself stop at all, I’d never move again. As bad as I had it… it wasn’t as bad as the boys. They were living under an overpass when I’d found them. Seemed so silly to be angry at them for stealing an empty wallet when they were starving to death. At least their mother had worked herself into the grave before this had happened to them. Mine was either in a drunken stupor or lashing out at me for driving Daddy Dearest away.
My arms hurt. My jaw was raw from the concrete I’d landed on (jaw broke my fall despite the flailing of my arms). I’d jumped out a two story window just to make it to work on time… but I’d rather chew aluminum before I brought my boys some supper. Maternal instincts? Oh hell no. That would require feelings of some sort. No, this was spite. Pure and simple.
He shivers in the snow, not sure where his next meal will come from. It’s cold, so cold that his hands feel frozen. The shelter down the road is full this time of year, or he’d swallow his pride and ask for their help. Maybe they could give him a home tomorrow night.
Ed Sheeran wasn’t really homeless. He had never been. But he’d heard from a woman in the shelter about her life and couldn’t help but write about it. But home was something Ed was very familiar with. From his mom’s home cooking to the view out his bedroom window, it was all familiar. That was what home should be.
imagine wandering around with no centre. your concentric circles just centre around your nomadic soul instead of from your front door… your axle is eternally wandering, cold and tired.
you gotta help the homeless. “help the homeless?” “money to feed the homeless?” we always shake our heads, tight-lipped smile… a fake look, trying to forget they’re human. but they are. aren’t they?
I went to the homeless shelter the other day. What I saw there disheartened me, but I needed to see it. It was definitely hard to see, but seeing all these people without homes to call their own, without a safe haven for their family to be together, and without many of the modern conveniences and comforts that I enjoy today, I almost wanted to cry. I wanted to give them my home.
I saw the man hunched over by the side of the road. I didn’t think about him much. Just passed him by. I really wish I could’ve seen his potential in life. Like how 20 years later he could be in that one movie that everyone liked and you saw his face everywhere.
Ghosts, sticking out their hands to you, but you draw away as if they are trying to drag you down to Hell. You thought you recognized one long ago so now you avert your gaze. If you don’t look, they don’t exist, and they will fade into the concrete, disappear behind the bustle of the busy street.
But remember this: late some night, once you’ve closed your eyes and slowed your breathing, after you’ve pulled the covers up to your chin and stretched your legs far down the cool sheets — then you will think of them again, and they will haunt you.
Within shallow, misty cavern atop the barren shadowlands resides a homeless savage- wounded and hollowed by the ruthless mongrels he once called kin.
My heart is homeless, I have no wife, I have no life!
Don’t let the bear be homeless. Let it come in, out of the rain. Let it sit at your desk, and rumple your pets, let the bear come in. If you’ve got some teA brewing, give him a spoonful of that. If you’ve got fish in the oven, let him have some of that, too.