“They tell me to fear the homeless in LA but I do not. They say women alone at night should not be out, but I have my dogs, and we frequent empty parks after dark, side-by-side with encampments, and we watch (my dogs and I) the homeless cart their belongs by. Well, my dog barks.

They hand me giant jugs over chin-high fences, to ask if I would fill them; their freshest water exists from a dog park spout. Last week I saw a man struggling to press a cardboard slat into the grate of an open sewage pipe, his secret resting place. About a month before, a man with all his worldly belongings strewn along the plastic floor of a porta-***** so smeared in ****t, you’d not dare touch a square inch. Rain was pouring, and he needed to sleep with a roof.

And I think, I am not so different from them. Me, with my white skin and pretty smile; people treat you nicer when you’re pretty. When you can put a face on and say straight-sounding things, and not speak of months spent living in your car, sleeping on street-sides, praying for no cops. Or of deep pain——no, do not speak of that. Too much pain makes people afraid, makes people want to look away. How no one noticed the man hiding his face in the sewage drain, the man sleeping in the ****t-smeared porta-toilet,   because   every   person   noticed,   and   just   decided   not   to   look.

and I think about      how many false narratives are propagated by fear——“

Who is right—us or them?
None stand pure, all condemn.
Same mistakes, the same old tricks,
a world that bends to the strongest sticks.

They want what they want—flawless, bright,
a hollow dream wrapped up in light.
A lie that grips, that shapes the mind,
none escape, none unwind.

Broken thoughts, blind beliefs,
like flies drawn close to tainted grief.
They circle, they feed, they take their share,
but none ask why, none even dare.

All fear when new thoughts rise,
the steps of change beneath closed eyes.
A world still wears the same old gloves,
different hands, but still it shoves.

Never bow to a stick, break free,
step ahead, seek, question, see.
Rise before they bring decay,
before they mold minds into clay.

No stick will feed the hungry mind,
no chains can hold the ones who find—
the truth, the cracks, the space between,
where freedom waits, unheard, unseen.

Unpeel the cloth that lye so softly on her skin,
peeling and stripping back her flesh as she conceals herself.
Watch her offer herself to the eyes that carved and stripped her,
then watch her plead to be draped in expectation.
You see; to be seen is to be undone.

oh to be the wept living eternally through the weeper.

I don't care what other people think,
the only opinion I need is my own.
And I form it in the echo chambers
of my cold and lonely home.

I don't trust what other people say.
I've been hurt by everyone I've known.
People are mostly out for themselves.
I'm better off working alone.

People don't listen when I talk.
Don't hear my dreams and fears.
And when I share the things I think,
people often disappear.

And when I give a friend advice
and they don't do what I say,
well how can I help my friends through life?
I don't know another way.

People and I have nothing in common.
They don't understand my pain.
I used to want people around me,
but now I just move away.

Please feel free to leave some critical feedback on the poem.

Well, could a fifth wheel

ever be useful as an --


emergency wheel?