My Poetry: Reflections From A Coffee House Window

Part One

Two festive hats sit sipping

From branded throw-away cup,

Both lean against a doorway

To an agency trading in health;

One sat on a blue mat

To keep the cold from his piles,

The clean-faced one sits on bare floor

Her clothes look less slept in.

The one in the Santa hat

Stands, turns to face west

Rucksack slung across back

Beanie pulled tight to her brow

Neither smile,

The one in the red cap nods.

He has no place to go,

As darkness falls around his shoulders.

Time ticks slow sat inside

The stone wind

Where clocks have no hands.

An ambulance screams down North Street

As seasonal whores

Bend their heads to the day

No time to look up between tills.

A glass wall sits between me and winter

My reflection sits beside the homeless figure,

I think of 'A Christmas Carol'.

A woman walks past

Gifts a chocolate cookie,

Food over money,

The middle class mantra,

But what good is sugar

When you need a hit

To soften the cold concrete?

He sips from branded coffee cup

I sip from mine

But it’s not the same

Part Two

I wipe a piece of beetroot

From my moustache,

This place used to be a treat

A one-pound sanctuary from home

Back when the government

Kept me off the streets.

Nursing a branded coffee cup

I'd sit daydreaming things were different

Writing colloquial words

With pockets empty of ambition

The monotony seemed less glamorous

Than when Hemingway told me

‘The Sun Also Rises’.

The sandwich's packaging

Asks me to 'break the cycle of homelessness'.

In a shrinking society each man

Must offer his largest largesse:

Here, take my job

Take my bed

Take this four quid falafel

Take the chains which shackle I

To the cycle of bourgeoisie holiness,

Where prayers plead

'Please, don't let the redundancies hit me, again'

And 'I hope Mum makes it to Christmas'.

The homeless man

Pushes a napkin around the doorway with his foot,

Rolls his blue mat into a bag,

He smiles at the chocolate chip woman

Who skips back to a six hundred grand house

Hopelessness slips from her brow,

She shed a weight from her consciousness

The only difference she made today.

The tramp's brow remains knotted

Is this how to break the cycle?

One biscuit at a time!

An ambulance flies by,

Does it know the answer?

A street cleaner stops

He ignores the tramp,

This town doesn't sweep up

The homeless.

The Brighton and Hove council officially counted 43 homeless in the city in 2015

This dedicated to: Casey – known as Taffy One Pence; Lesley 'Gareth' Raymond (see below picture); A woman named only as Caroline who all died over the 2015 festive period