homelessness poems

Living with Regret | Wayne Russell - A Poetry Website Featuring Poems by Contemporary Poets

Living with Regret | Wayne Russell

Profound brown leaves,
crushed underneath my
feet, like memories; swirling
and forlorn.
I dream of us and our children,
it’s the good times that I cling
onto in the noonday sun.
It’s the memories that shelter
me, from the onslaught of winter
woe.
It’s the knowledge of loneliness,
that mortifies me the most, lost
without my family.
It’s facing a craggy city, threading
a bleak needle of homelessness,
asleep in some derelict house, long
abandoned by inhabitants, encased
now by only the darkness and me.
—–
Wayne Russell is an amateur photographer and creative writer who was born and raised in Florida. Wayne’s musings have been published online and in print since about 1990. Wayne is a recovering alcoholic who currently roams the streets of Columbus, OH.

And the Rain Fell | Chris Byrne - A Poetry Website Featuring Poems by Contemporary Poets

And the Rain Fell | Chris Byrne

As I sat, cold and hungry
In the rain, not knowing
If anyone cared,
Pondering, would anybody
Miss me? I was just another
Figure on the list
Tomorrow will be better,
I’d think,
Dark dismal thoughts
Flooded my brain
Not knowing if I’d get
A bed for the night
Or have to face the
Night
Life flashed before
My eyes, could I make it?
Could I?
Now I look back
Wonder how I
Survived.

Vagrant Soup | Paul Tristram - A Poetry Website Featuring Poems by Contemporary Poets

Vagrant Soup | Paul Tristram

You can tell when the first frost is on its way…
the Down-And-Outs don’t talk in the soup-run queue.
Instead, they stand there in silent huddles,
like mourners at a bewildered funeral,
at the back of the opened-doored, volunteer van.
Steams of breath floating up into the evening, Winter air,
mostly statue-like, apart from the shivering.
It’s a shame to have to park down on this quayside,
the wind rips straight up this river from yonder estuary
something mercilessly and almost with a vengeance.
But, the Council have banned the Homeless
from the City Centre, whether sober or not, doesn’t matter.
The sight of them was upsetting the Christmas shoppers…
as they vulture in and out of the decorated stores,
tasting free wine samples and spending thousands.
Stocking up on more than enough ‘Merry’
to see them safely through their warm, magical, full of love
and gift-sharing Holiday Season… God bless us one and all!

More at https://paultristram.blogspot.co.uk/.

Mental Health | J.K. Durick - A Poetry Website Featuring Poems by Contemporary Poets

Mental Health | J.K. Durick

We settled it years ago, closed asylums, so many,
those Dickensian places, exposed, closed, patients,
inmates released into the world, often just left off
with few plans and fewer places to go; streets are
never enough; homeless they haunt us, we jail them,
fill emergency rooms with them, with no beds for
them; instead of doctors we give them the police,
instead of treatment, we jail them, instead of solutions
we get statistics, how many of the homeless, how
many crimes, how many dollars we spend to no end,
and we’re getting to know that solutions are never
as easy as they seem to be.

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