P ag e 12
S tre e t R o o ts •
Street Poetry
TIRADO, from page 9
M arch 1 3 -1 9 , 2 0 1 5
Nobody’s Child
Christopher Robinson
logic. That’s patronizing and condescending. It’s well-intentionéd.
And that’s the trouble that we have a lot of the time with the poor.
We have such good intentions but we do not trust them, and we
tell them that we do not trust them. This is why food stamps can’t
buy diapers, because we don’t trust people with money. You want
to solve poverty, give people money. If you want to solve
homelessness, put people in empty houses. That’s what Salt Lake
(City) is doing, and it’s a fantastic program. It’s actually really
working really well. If you want to tell people to be autonomous
adults that make good decisioift, let them be autonomous adults
that make good decisions. But don’t treat us like we’re infants. You
can’t treat an adult like a 5-year-old and then expect them not to
resent you.
You have these workplaces where they treat you like you are 5
and then they tell you that you do not deserve any better. And you
know, look at what I’ve done. Look at what I have managed. And
they pulled me out of a night-shift diner in nowhere, Utah. Do you
know how many philosophers work in diners? Do you know how
many artists, how many geniuses? My favorite cook of all time
used to sing arias in the most gorgeous baritone that you’ve ever
heard in the middle of the night when nobody was around. You
give a poor person some resources, honey, we’re just as capable as
anybody else. The only reason that most people haven’t
accomplished anything is they’ve never had the start-up capital to
do it with.
A child cries out in the night
no one comforts the child
A child walks through the night lost and hungry
no one finds and feeds the child
Someone is beating the child
Someone has burned the child
Someone has locked the child in a basement in a bedroom in a closet in a shed.
Somebody has tied the child on a bed to a staircase to a chair.
The child is neglected, unwanted, unloved, unseen, unclaimed.
The child grows up alone uncared for.
Who will love the child
Who will cry for the child
Will the child die alone
Will the child die in vain
Who is that child
That child was me?
I’m all grown up now
I survived childhood abuse
I should be a killer but I’m not
I should be a hater but I’m not
I should want revenge but I don’t
I am a loving kind drug and alcohol-free well adjusted black man who knows all too
well about what it means to be hated
I am a gay man who knows the true meaning of Hell hath no fury like a woman’s
scorn.
I know what it’s like to be homeless and eat out of dumpsters
I know how it feels to be unwanted and I’m used to being hated
I was punished for being born, being black being gay and rejected for being me
The bottom line is I am a survivor and now live a quiet life here in Portland, Oregon
J.P. W hat is som ething that a low-income person can ga in fro m
reading the book?
L.T. I don’t think I say anything in that book that somebody
working at McDonald’s doesn’t already know. Again, it goes back
to “You are not the only one. You are not the only one.” And not
only are you not the only one, it’s not entirely your fault. Any
mistakes that you have made, this is America, you should be able
to get backup and recover. The fact that there is no more
recovering from a ^mistake is a prohl^.m. with
that w p
have built, not with an individual. If it were an individual problem,
our unemployment rate wouldn’t have been this record high for so
long. If it were an individual problem, we wouldn’t have Stanford
talking about how we’re almost an oligarchy. When the Ivy League
starts saying, “We’ve got a problem,” then you cannot blame
yourself for not being able to fix the problem that the greatest
minds in our country can’t fix. And that’s why I wrote the book. I
wrote the book for people who are like me. It’s great if some
people who have a lot of comfort and a lot of wealth and a lot of
privilege read it and learn some things. I think that’s fantastic, and
they need to. This book I wrote to validate everything that
everybody I’ve ever known has talked about and felt, because they
finally gave somebody a chance to talk about i t
Sisters Of The Road
Looking into Her Eyes
David Mair
In the fall little kids
Are so excited at the sight
Of freshly fallen leaves that
Are ready to be stomped on.
Over and over.
Her eyes are the beautiful brown,
Of those leaves that
Bring such happiness.
of Sisters...
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