A part of me loves the spotlight, comes alive in it. A part me hates it, would rather be the wizard behind the curtain, pulling strings and strategically calling shots with no one to know what I look like with the purpose of helping others in need. I’d exist like an angel, a pure thought, to lead the blind and [...]
Met with volunteer coordinators at the mission: Charity and Chairman. They are both advocates of hope and change. Chairman seemed pensive, wide eyed at every corner to develop organizational management. Charity seemed transparent, a bird in the hand, has a degree in communications. During lunch, we talked about poetry and publishing, grimy journalism. There was boneless chicken breasts sautéed with [...]
The overpass at 18th and San Bruno is a galaxy for b-boys and concrete surfers, is spiraled like a seashell. There, tags are burned in brick and cracks where skateboards have been, is a bench for weary travelers. Many a drifter comes here to count recyclable cans, to add up a day’s work. Some shoot through the galaxy like a [...]
The voices in my head have horns. My ambitions are not aligned with what I have to work with, they’re much more headier. They’re like bulls, if you slap them on the ass they’ll come after you. Steer you this way and that way to escape them. So I pray, and I jog, for life, to stay fit, to increase [...]
The ride from my apartment to the Mission is a choose-your-own-adventure, scenic and shifting, flat or hilly in either or places. The sky is a blanket of blue, showing all its glory, sharing all its sun with the dispossessed, displaced, and distraught addicts, bums, panhandlers, and drifters wrung around the shelter waiting for the sound of church bells and a [...]
It was time to put everything where it should’ve been: books on the shelf, clothes in the hamper, dishes in the sink. When my apartment is clean and my bed is made I feel energized, ready to face the day, ready to run the gauntlet of life despite the many poles of adversity swinging to hinder my stride: then they [...]
