The Concrete

Cover of the Street Sheet poetry issue 2021. The bottom half of the page features a path leading to two cities, one decorated with words like "pain", "loss", and "death"; the other words like "life", "strength" and "care".

I am not afraid of poverty

I learned at the age of three that oxygen wasn’t free

And the expense of life was madness

That would forever be submerged

In a ice cold bathtub

If I watched my brother die would I freeze?

Without feeling powerless

I try to escape my right to frost

By submitting to the inevitable

I hugged the ocean’s waves

But I lost my mind at night

Survival is for the unfortunate

For sordid dreams to collapse by a broken family

I collected my whims in jars

And the moon captured my fears of governance

To be disregarded in history

Man without a home

A misery

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The Utopians

Cover of the Street Sheet poetry issue 2021. The bottom half of the page features a path leading to two cities, one decorated with words like "pain", "loss", and "death"; the other words like "life", "strength" and "care".

The season of giving has come to everyone

In the Kingdom of Heaven,

As keepers of the

Garden around us there is a glow, here is peace harmony

And love,

We give praise for deliverance and the abundance from

Above,

Wide open is Heaven’s mandate titanic hope is at hand

Promising salvation to women and men,

Filling cups promised and granted,

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2020 in the Rear-View: Unhoused, Sheltered in Place

Briefly in 2020, it wasn’t always “all COVID, all the time.”

That was for about two and a half months into the new year.

The first year into a new decade almost seems like eons ago, but early 2020, at one point, is where homelessness in San Francisco and the U.S. might have turned a corner — starting as early as December 2019.

Then, the Martin v. Boise case in Idaho was upheld when the U.S.

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City to Close Down Shelter In Place (SIP) Hotels:

Where Will Residents Go?

Earlier this month plans to shut down Shelter in Place (SIP) hotels, which are currently housing 2,400 otherwise homeless residents, leaked out of the COVID-19 Command Center (CCC). The hotel guests set to lose their shelter have been categorized as ‘vulnerable’ by the City, meaning that they are over 60 years old or have an underlying health condition. Unhoused people and advocates across San Francisco have sprung into action to prevent the plan from moving forward,

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Shut Up and Take My Money!

In October of 2015, I went from living at the Navigation Center to living in a building master leased by the Tenderloin Housing Clinic. As much as housing gave me the illusion of freedom, I actually felt that some freedom was taken away, as from here on out, I had to sign over my check to the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, and have them cut me a check for my income minus rent (what is called the “modified payment program”

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