I’ve written all I care to on the subject of homelessness, and personally experienced more than enough. Highlights include being mocked and threatened, propositioned, bored, despairing, beset by insects and extreme temperatures, and the inability to bathe or sleep adequately. Yeeha. And that’s just my take on it. Some folks have it even worse.
Being homeless is hard enough. Frankly, and to put it in the vernacular, it sucks. No fun. Not into it. Pass. Add to this, then, the newest wrinkle: the local PD now being obliged by the Prescott City Council to enforce ordinance 3778, 7-14-1998, which bans camping within the city limits (“camping” in this sense does not involve tents, campfires or s’mores; it effectively means simply attempting to sleep anywhere while homeless, including in your own vehicle), declaring it a misdemeanor. Ignore the fact that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled enforcement of such laws unconstitutional. Prescott doesn’t care about that. It cares about tourism. It cares — maybe — about its wealthier residents. It clearly doesn’t care about the homeless, though, and certainly not about me; the Prescott City Council has effectively made me a fugitive.
I spend my writing energy primarily on prose, be it fiction or essay. I only resort to poetry in the most dire of circumstances, when emotion prohibits reasoned, composed expression. By way of nonviolent, literate revenge, I decided to vent my anger and frustration in a poem, influenced, since I was writing it on Halloween night, by Edgar Allan Poe’s "The Raven." I am not Poe, however, and for my considerable shortcomings as a poet, I apologize to the reader.
Evicted from Dreamland
Once upon an October’s eve,
at a temperature fit to freeze,
I parked to rest my homeless bones,
seeking only peace, alone.
Out of sight of gated gentry
into Dreamland I sought entry.
As I slumbered, coldly napping,
suddenly there came a tapping
as of someone gently rapping
on my driver door. I thought,
“Perhaps I woke myself with a snore,
only this, nothing more.”
Though back to sleep I wished to flee,
my eyes were blurred and I had to pee,
while peeking through the glass at me
was the local constabulary.
Though my transgression was but minimal,
would I now be branded criminal?
The man in blue was full of queries
as I stood there weak and weary,
he asked, “Are you drunk, or are you high
or are you just a homeless guy?
Are you wanted, are you armed,
are you the owner of this car?”
He said, “You mayn’t camp within Prescott’s borders,
but don’t blame me for following orders.
The City Council is to blame,
and to them alone belongs the shame,
of seven tin-plated little clowns
who’ve reinvented the Sundown Town.
It’s they who dictate what’s to be,
this body devoid of empathy.”
Cold and miserable aren’t enough
— on the weakest we must get tough.
It’s a nightly game of cat and mouse
if you don’t live inside a house,
and lack of sleep will break a man
as quick as any torture can.
What the City Council wants is clear:
to drive the homeless far from here,
to warmer climes on a Greyhound bound,
into a ditch or underground
— out of sight and out of mind,
a Prescott free of the undesirable kind.
I’d thought myself an innocent man,
but little did I understand,
that in my life there’d come a time
when trying to live became a crime.
If an honest man is guilty now,
why be honest anyhow?
Why not thwart the laws each day
if I’m an outlaw anyway?
Fat wallets are welcome, have no fear,
the poor don’t let sundown find them here.
Let’s post a new sign at the city’s door,
one more honest than before:
“Everybody’s Hometown, since 1864”
— quoth the Council, “Nevermore!”
October 31–November 1, 2023
