Every Wednesday is
harvest day on our block.
After fighting through traffic
in the over populated streets,
parking by my building gets scarce
on Wednesday
because the garbage cans
are out on the curb
taking up the spots.
Once the sun goes down,
I can hear it: the squeak of the grocery-cart,
my recycle bin being opened,
and the bottles collected for scrap.
Clink, clink, smash!
Sometimes the glass and cans wake me.
I get up and look out the window.
I see the streetlights glow on the huddled flesh,
or the police lights down the block strobe that
sick glow on my walls.
It’s harvest time.
I think of all the bottles of beer from the week before
that have helped me get over my hard work, and helped me
live with myself as I pay for this room.
Toasts of joy, and hits of sorrow,
to feel something, or feel nothing at all.
Yet this is the best feeling: knowing that I am giving
something back,
even if it’s just recycling bottles for a few bucks per
pound.
Now some shadow person can get a meal, or just as likely
more bottles,
or some powder stronger than what I know.
I’ve been a bum, well hipster-homeless.
I’ve played guitar on the corner for change.
I’ve slept in warehouses, and on scaffoldings in the rain.
But that was a long time ago.
Now I work at an office where no one has any idea who I was.
Sure, I live in a cheap room just above the curb, but
I play the game to stay in it… and I no longer need to
bother
to recycle my own bottles for change anymore.
I can let them go
to the army in LA who rules the streets.
Every Wednesday is
harvest day on
our block.
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