POWER OF POEMS TO REKINDLE MEMORIES

ON FRANKLIN STREET




By Charles Patrick Norman



The four of us on Franklin Street one Saturday we walked,

My younger brothers ran ahead to peer in store windows

While I stretched my small steps beside my father’s strides

In blind imitation of his proud strut I stalked.



We came upon a withered man in dirty clothes upon the ground,

Against a vacant building door he leaned with dried flowers in hand,

Twisted red crepe paper, green wire stems, not worth much, to me,

Yet my father reached deeply in his pocket, giving all the quarters he found.



He handed me the flower, a poppy, symbol of a long-ago great war,

I did not understand why he paid a price so dear and asked him.

He said we can never repay that man for what he sacrificed,

“I’d have given him dollars, not silver, were we not so poor.”



In times to come I found my father never passed a beggar by

Without sharing what little he had for a pencil, smile, or God bless you.

He tossed his precious packs of Camels to road prisoners from his car

In high spinning arcs that one grinning soul snatched deftly from the sky.



He’s gone now, my father, these many years, yet his heart beats on in me,

I try to do what he would do for those less fortunate than I,

Even when it is the last I have with none to come, or more,

I think of us four on Franklin Street that day, when I was young and free.

A NEW POEM

WE ARE THE SQUANDERI

By Charles Patrick Norman




We are The Squanderi, the squandered ones,

You know us, but you turn your head

At the disturbing sight that otherwise offend

Your refined senses of justice, opportunity, and

The American Dream.


Our mothers were Squanderi before us,

Pre-teen pregnant, high on drugs offered freely

Through corporate neighborhood distribution networks

That start with billionaires with ships, airplanes and warehouses,

Down to teen dealers wearing Air Jordans passing out free samples

To addict each new generation of Squanderi to their losing ways

Of stealing from their Squanderi mothers and grandmothers

Who tend them,

To selling drugs themselves to feed their habits,

To trading their Squanderi bodies

For a few hours of narcotized oblivion.

We are the Squanderi babies born with fetal alcohol syndrome,

Premature babies the size of rabbits or squirrels

Removed from Squanderi wombs,

Already twitching from withdrawals

Our primitive pleasure centers calling out

For crack cocaine before we’ve tasted

Tainted mother’s milk,

Or seeking heroin, or pills of corporate choice,

Oxycodone and her sisters.


We are The Squanderi children

Who wander, lost,

Off the bus to elementary schools miles away,

Hungry, no breakfast, no eggs, milk or juice

Like your pink-cheeked cherubs with warm clothing,

New shoes, backpacks stuffed with school supplies and cell phones.


What’s a cell phone?

It’s what the dealers hold up to their ears

Or tap with their fingers and smile.

We are The Squanderi children who sit at the back of the classroom,

Starving, vacant-eyed, staring at the backs of the heads

Of your well-tended children who raise their hands

With the answers to unintelligible questions

Of that teacher who drones on and on

And never looks our way.

It is too disturbing.

It won’t do them any good, anyway,

An education.

They are Squanderi.

We are The Squanderi.

We descend upon “the convenience store” in our flocks

Like robins on a strawberry field,

Hoping to snatch a Twix or Skittles or beef jerky

Or a bag of Lays Potato Chips

Before we are shooed and hustled out the door

By the dark-skinned man who curses us

In some unknown tongue learned

In even worse slums of Mumbai, or Bombay,

Or whatever they’re calling it now,

A man now driving a shiny foreign car

Manufactured in Tennessee or Alabama

By Japanese or Germans or other folks

Who were shooting at Grandpa

Scant decades ago, and are now our friends

In prosperity that never seems to trickle down

To the bottom of the barrel where we squirm

And fend for ourselves,

Too many hands with manicured nails above us

Scooping out the meat before the broth reaches us.


When we Squanderi are hungry we will do things

That do not occur to you or us when our bellies are full,

Like the day the food stamps come on the card

And Grandma fries a chicken and potatoes

And we drink milk for two or three days

Until the gallon jug is empty.


What are food stamps, you ask?


We are The Squanderi children,

Diseased, impregnated

By those who squander our bodies

And discard us along with our sick babies,

Like those before us, waiting in lines,

Visiting our wasted mothers with brown teeth

Rotted from crystal meth along with their minds.


What did you bring me?

In jails and distant prisons, but not our fathers,

Who we wouldn’t recognize anyway

Unless Maury Povich gives DNA tests

To the neighborhood dope men on TV,

A lengthy process of elimination,

“You are NOT the Father!”


We are The Squanderi who used to fill up the mental hospitals

Until the rich politicians closed them down

So they could free up more tax dollars to steal,

Let them eat cake, or stand in line at the Salvation Army

Or some do-gooder soup kitchen like everyone else.

So now we live in homeless shelters, or cardboard boxes

In alleys, under eight-lane bridges, or city parks,

Panhandling

The Good Citizens who hold their breaths

And turn up their noses,

Offended by the stench of The Squanderi.


Don’t give them anything—

It only encourages them.

Why don’t those people get jobs

And better themselves, instead of taking

Government handouts from taxpaying citizens?


Jobs doing what?

Picking tomatoes at some corporate agricultural conglomerate

Twenty miles from the projects where not even

Illegal immigrant farmworkers dare to tread,

In fear of the white men in jackets with “ICE”

On the backs?

And then what?

Find our way back to town and trade

Twenty dollars to the teen with the cell phone

To his ear

For a few yellow crack rocks?


We are The Squanderi, who fill the juvenile “homes,”

The courts, the jails, the prisons

With “mandatory lifes,”

And some of us, the lucky ones,

Get strapped into polished wood chairs

With electrical connections pioneered by

Thomas Alva Edison and George Westinghouse

(Ask Mr. Google — he knows everything),

Better known for consumer products

That make your lives easier, insulated

So that your pink-cheeked cherubs

Won’t be “accidentally” electrocuted

By the dishwasher or plasma screen TV.


The jolts of electricity fry our brains

One last good time,

Smoke comes out our ears until

Our unwanted Squanderi bodies

Are carted away

For further cremation

With those Squanderi before us,

Ashes to ashes.


Or “The Authorities” will pump our veins full

With corporate drugs designed for “euthanasia”

Of dogs and cats and other surplus animals

Like us, The Squanderi,

They “put us to sleep” like Fido and Muffy,

One last shot of chemical dependency,

A final buzz at the buzzer,

SWISH,

We’ll never be this high or low again.


Thanks, I needed that. Better to die now

Than spend an eternity in your cages

Built by other Squanderi, supervised by

Fat white men with clipboards, hard hats and shiny trucks.

We are The Squanderi. Pay no attention to us.

We are not of your class or your world.

We are just “The Wasted Ones,”

On the way to the dump

With the other trash.

Pray to your God that you never join us.


Charlie