Life In the 'Projects'

like sparrows on the streets and in caves consider how they swoop and dive and fatten on dusty pizza crumbs consider the raccoons how they squawk and squalor peck and fight for space to grow fat gray hairs and live as a family in the wild consider them consider the homeless man on East Euclid dragging Giant-Eagle cart on the sidewalk every hour with rags searching through litterbins for a meal consider the hare the rabbit the crow and ants with no pay stubs yet with no long days of boredom and they lie in cleanest beds and smile at dinner times then consider me after the gavel and the long sentence living with cancelled checks crying over lost purpose scarred of sirens and hunting shelters for meals consider me sleeping in fields with dead numbers consider me whose far-distant ancestors never crashed in any trash but drank coffee with Carnegie on his birthday consider me coming out of institutions that mark me forever with a bindi that blocks my name from the list of humans and to live I have to peep through thorn bushes and grunt