[Action-forum] Our Brothers and Sisters on the Streets

[Jane Scharf]

This is a poem sent to me by Don Lester upon receipt of our
statement about the police shutting down the squeegee action
on Saturday June 25. http://homelesscrisis.tripod.com/id18.html

Most recently the Homeless Action Strike as been involved in
the Chiarelli Street Bazaar at Ottawa City Hall also taken
down almost immediately by police July 1.
http://homelesscrisis.tripod.com/id16.html

And in the past week all the street kids in Ottawa have disappeared.
Crisis workers and other street involved persons are
unaware of what has happened and we are alarmed. I have never
seen such a crack down before.

Poem With No Title

Please, Remember Me Hidden, and unseen, well kept lost behind the scene,
empty buildings, under bridges, garbage they glean,
at night behind restaurants, silence is their demean,
trapped, burdens, sacrificed, lost without a dream.

Yearly events, prostrated by the wealthy who donate
only to be forgotten and frowned upon and left to fate
for the following three hundred, sixty four days in wait,
again, for those who give, to be acclaimed by the gate.

Wondering and sleeping on the streets keeping sanity,
the only recourse remaining to uphold ones self identity,
or curl up in beds saturated by rotated bodes, impurity,
a million times slept in by others, lost without self dignity.

This is where I began, on the streets and here I will remain.
I did not learn as others did, the brush of time paints a stain,
one thing that we have in common, below is where we drain
They say, church is to clean.

By Don Lester

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