IT CAN HAPPEN TO ANYONE

What's it like to be homeless?                                            

JONATHAN HAYWARD /
THE CANADIAN PRESS
Park rangers walk
past a homeless person
 sleeping on a bench
in Oppenheimer Park
 in downtown
Vancouver, on Oct. 16.
A June mental health
study found providing
 housing, and backing that up
with support
services, was more
effective and
cost-efficient at getting
people off the streets than
trying to treat them first.

Hair a mess

Because you're combless
Body aches
The ground is foamless
Nowhere to go
Means you roam less
Your gleam is gone
Dull and chromeless
When not in Rome
Do as the Romeless

Collateral damage for the Western life
Nobody wants to know your plight;
Unless you got kids, a job
A house, a car and a wife
There's no pie left, for your slice
Reality cuts deep, like a knife
Many are a pay-check light
From being labeled a social blight

Mr. good shoes said, get a job                                                    

All his life, been a working slob;

He frowns on your luck after dark;                                    

At Queens Park Station, near Queens Park 

A lady with a good bag threw spare change
But our loonie went down the drain

Hunger pangs

Canada failing homeless
youth, report charges

On a belly descend
Cold subway fangs
Passerby, ain't no friend

Dope sick feeding time                                                                        
You're on the mend
Spare change for your veins
This hurt won't pretend

Light the way
Like flame to paraffin
Chase the day

Blaming lack of homeless services
for recent deaths is jumping the gun
MARCUS GEE
The Globe and Mail

With sweet Ms. Heroin

Nod your head
Scratch your nose
In the darkness
No one knows
How the loneliness
And despair just grows

No homeless shelter
Will pass for a home
When winters cold, cuts to the bone
Or summer's, sweltering heat, has grown                                           

The Homeless Hub, a research
 library and information centre
at York University, says that
close to 200,000 people are homeless
 each year in Canada but more
than 1 million Canadians have
experienced homelessness
at some point in their lives.

Why don't police just leave them alone?

Ate a bag of day old donuts
On a sour stomach, made you go nuts
On the ground, picking up butts
Your day is spent riding the bus

The local library, ain't no home
No fixed address, no books on loan
Security chased you, from the Eaton Centre
Because you're neither a homeowner,
Nor a renter
Those with no home
Are labeled - offender

Anyone, can become, mentally ill
Does that mean, your life, should go downhill?
Some are elderly, some are young
Yet many drop, an economic rung

Many are sent to the house of detention
In admin seg, with no medical attention
Others are homeless, and under housed
Living under bridges, where they caroused
By homelessness, is your apathy aroused?                                      

Two outdoor deaths prompt
Toronto to review how
 it treats the homeless

Like the so called values, our elected espoused

Housing needs to be more affordable
Using subsidies remaining portable
So existing housing is supportable
So the lives of many are not deplorable
Canada's less progressive, than Portugal
Where drug decriminalization became historical

Today's Canadian values are less exportable!