BAG-LADY IN THE PORTRAIT GALLERY
In all my failed moments of ambitious grace,
The truth, swarth-headed, lifts its greenest shape
To madly light the curls of whitest lace
Edging your throat, and redeem the nape
Where a brown knob burnishes the bone.
Such well-bred tenants of the proudest hock
Like ancient grandees, dawn on my lone
Outride of the politic, and who can mock
The wasteland where now our dreams
Have only the patina of reality to make us sad,
Where derelicts abound in housing schemes
For the heart’s homeless moments, and the bad
Lands of myth are skeletal. Public thresholds
Invest our private myths, and the flesh holds.
FROM IN MEMORY OF HER 2004, 2008
she has a cart
fill with art
sleep and eat
in a parking lot
she must be hot
loads of cloth
some call her sade
the
BAG LADY
some are young and old
like giveing soul
about to fold
they carry a load
mabe gold or cloths
i new one her name was
sade
i call her s
BAG LADY
She slept upon a bench,
Her snores annoyed a guy.
He told her to shut up,
And stabbed her in the eye. *
*A true story about an elderly bag lady, who was murdered at a local bus station.
Her head hung in shame
why is she to blame?
Kids took it all from her
now all she has is this worthless fur
that keeps her warm at night
a space to keep warm is a terrible fight
a small portion of food is all she may get all day
being homeless is a terrible price to pay
with no money in her pockets she has to resort to begging and stealing
some may give but this a world with no feeling
so once again she lies her head on a park bench or hard cement pillow for the night
Why me she asks, am i in this terrible plight.
Bag Lady
Chicago’s North Side
This senior citizen
whose face is Rushmore still
squats with pigeons on the steps
of the Rogers Park Masonic Temple.
She wears a shawl this snowy day
and is beneath the visor of a hunting cap
a woman who has paused along the way.
Her shopping bags, stuffed, frayed,
and each square feature of her face, confess
she speaks at best a little English.
Rested, she will rise,
a penguin on a floe,
and navigate her day.
Donal Mahoney
The clothes she wore were twenty years old
Tattered and torn not much protection from the cold
The rusty cart she pushed with wheels well worn
The hair on her head needed to be shorn
Slowly into the emergency room she did enter
Just in time for her heart was tender
As she sat down in the chair
Her lungs no longer filling with air
Passed out onto the floor
Someone coming in through the door
Yelled code blue alert
Then the staff turned with a jerk
Everyone moved in hight speed motion
Some people wondered what's the commotion
Just like lighting to the operating room
Jane Doe was whizzed which was none too soon
After days of tender loving care
Still unidentified she slipped away from there
Meeting her husband beside the road
Speeding away in their car they drove
She was no bag lady
But America's elderly poor
Who needed heart surgery
But couldn't afford the cure
(This is copied righted on LuLu's Poetry.com as are most of my work, some of which is
supposed to be published in their anology series. Sara)
Old with wisdom they say
A long life she lived
Wrinkles tell her story well
The crow’s feet gauge her eyes
Dull, colored grey now
Without a spark in sight.
Time is for the birds
The clock has not been kind to her.
A life of wealth or poverty stricken
Neither what the story books foretell
Banished to life alone.
Her husband, gone
He was dead and gone years ago
Overcome with death, they say
Even alive, he was still dead
His destiny had been written on his face.
She must have expected it.
And so she carried on the same
Day in and day out
Setting the timer for the corn bread
Like watching life run out of breath.
Time is for the birds.
She will accompany him soon,
That timer is almost ready to sound.
She must be expecting it;
Destiny has begun to write its self on her face.
She watched him die well before he ran out of life
And now she will carry on the same.
You’d think she’d do something differently
Like take a bite of forbidden fruit
But rather than trying to live
She will simply follow suit
And live to die.
Time is for the birds.
She humbles herself
With her lack of ambition
A stain of sadness
In all that she wears
She mumbles through life
With words of conviction
banished from gladness
by guilt that she bears
She crumbles inside
From a need for contrition
A martyr for madness
she sits and she stares
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