Cold is like a language,
I need to learn it
or I die.

Litter goes in the bin – ah lunch!
A crushing hunger fighting over
a half-finished burger and scraps of fries.

At first I shit in my jeans.
Sometimes I had advice
from my “buddies”.

It defines you –
dog eat dog
as the competition grows.

Dog piss washed my face
and I was ready
for the new day.

What will happen
to my pension –
I cry so.

The subway is
the loneliest place
I’ll ever know – the Devil’s home.

That barren landscape
being so sparsely populated
that my mother wouldn’t recognise me.

I soon lost the art of language;
my parched mouth
developed grunts as acknowledgement.

A cooling breeze to you
might be an ice wind for me –
fanning my feral eyes.

We are all animals.
Most are dressed
in human skin

I was beyond psychiatric help.
I lay helpless –
would I ever kiss again?

My friends were the rats,
who had themselves befriended
those who had been before me.

Homelessness isn’t what it used to be.
It took hold of me,
it is not freedom.

I had developed the art of survival
in such an inner city wilderness,
such is the fragility of time.

So I did wonder what the pigeons’ taste like?
Nature at its most raw, forever more
a human organ!

I grasped truth
until my hands bled –
It was my stigmata.

I never knew myself until now.

By  Fairburn