Poking and blowing on the embers for fear they’ll stifle and the morning will give way to the coming cold, frozen nightmare threatening to slumber the last sleep. Wrapped in garbage bags and newspaper surrounded by rubbish, collected in an attempt to provide insulation from the nightmare that would remind I am alive. Don’t know what I drank but it scalded my intestines and made me imagine I had traveled to Mars for a time. Oh, to come back crashing upon the surface of this petrified park, shifting so whoever I am laying up against isn’t being poked by my elbow, groaning. What is there to fear if everything is fearsome.

I know one of them will kill me, it is just a matter of natural selection as to which bully achieves the objective of removing one more rodent from this habit trail, America.  Racing, puffing, wheezing as my little legs struggle to keep up with the pace of the spinning field around me. If only poetry could save me for I can be almost Shakespearean as I pivot in the ballet of my verbal nom de plume. But that is of no value in this home challenged daydream, today I am a survivalist turned loose in the concrete jungle, to take, scrape, bite, scratch, steal, bargain or plunder for the purpose of existence.  Today I stay alive, until tomorrow.

Where is this God of whom they come to offer food and sleeping bags that we trade for pot and hot chocolate?  I pretend to listen, but I have practiced that concerned look while thinking about Hawaii or Disneyland as they tell me about salvation from this rat race. It just doesn’t make sense as they come in their fresh faced, clean clothes and cell phone driven moments apparently somehow giving themselves the cathartic joy of saying that their visit made a difference by telling me the way to the Cross I have yet to experience.  Look lady, I am going to take all the free food, gifts and money you offer, because all of it is useful in the jungle, for trade for insurance for one night’s full rest without shiver. I would sell anything but I am not what the lustful demand, too skinny, too small, too white.  I guess I should thank the stars that I’ve got nothing they want for then I would really be in a brier patch full of tar.  I’ve got no free stuff today so it is to the soup kitchen I stumble, waiting gladly in a line to get something that I can hold onto that’s warm to melt my frozen digits.

Maybe tomorrow, I will listen to the Pastor’s convocation.  Today its about forgiveness and hope, two things upon which I have wasted too many nights with no reward, so they have been dispensed in the dust bin of remembrance.  Who needs hope, when there is no way out of the this abyss of constant trial?  What I need is escape.  I search for Wanda because she always manages to hook up with some uptowners who give her free dope. That will help this day become bearable. It funny no matter how badly I smell, everyone else always seems to smell worse than me.  No one really ever showed me this Love of Christ of which He is speaking.  I get a whole lot of lecture and promises but nothing so concrete as this grey observance I experience daily.  Maybe tomorrow I will get my chance to rise above this nightmare of my own making, but for now I will play along, drinking what is offered, eating and sharing life with those gathered in their own indecision.  I shake the Pastor’s hand and he stops the procession. Pulling me close he whispers, “Daniel, I don’t know how to give you hope, but if you will trust me, I can show you the way to find your way out of this maze that you are running”.  “I love you little Brother and you were meant for so much more than this”, he says.  “There is a bus leaving tomorrow for a new program, a program looking for men who want to start a new life”.  He pauses, waiting for me to show some interest upon which to build.  “Maybe tomorrow”, I say.  Tonight I have plans.

Maybe someday some one will love me enough to offer me a way to get out of this nightmare, but tonight I will just have to survive one one more day, on my own whits.  Off to find Wanda and her bag of weed or whatever else she is willing to offer.  Time to escape.  Maybe tomorrow my ship will arrive, for tonight I am glad that it looks like a clear night of stars.