Some Thoughts on My Poems About Homelessness

I recently decided to publish a collection of my poems written over the last two decades and have been polishing the manuscript for several months. The book should come out this fall. I’ve never considered myself a poet, but many experiences of late present themselves as poems, not treatments of prose. So I just follow the call. I apply no theories to my poetry or any pre-conceived notions of craft. All my poetry emerges as sheer instinct. I want to be direct, lucid. The denizens of dive bars can read my poems without confusion; they might even relish them because they sometimes provide the subject matter.

The collection is organized into five categories, one of which is “Homelessness.” All 16 of the poems on the subject have appeared on my Substack newsletter New American Diaspora or Nestucca Spit Pres Meditations blog. None were submitted to regional and national reviews, journals or magazines that publish poetry. One was published in a Coos Bay zine that was primarily distributed in laundromats and street libraries.

When I collated all my poems about homelessness, arranged them (not chronologically) and read them multiple times to edit/polish, I was struck by the levity that surfaced in many of them via incidents of outrageous antics (with zero irony) that made me laugh when I observed them. Such as when a homeless man rode his bicycle handless while eating powered donuts from a box or when a homeless man wrote a haiku in mustard on a sidewalk.

Is levity the right tone for poetry about homelessness? Is there even an answer for that question? I just managed to find some light or dark comedy (not frivolity) in these moments and wrote exactly what I witnessed, never taking poetic license because I’ve never had to when writing about homeless men and women. It’s all right there in front of me, often a few feet away. I never have to search for precious obtuse metaphors, either, because mine are riding bicycles past me, eating corndogs, swilling from fifths of Southern Comfort, often pulling ingenious trailer contraptions to convey personal possessions and returnable cans and bottles. Some are even playing foosball in an encampment or barbecuing crawdads with a blow torch.

It has also occurred to me that if I don’t introduce some levity into these scenes of homelessness I encounter, I’d become too jaded to write anything about them. Finding this humor also helps dissipated my occasional frustration or anger related to these people.

And why can’t some poems make readers laugh? When is the last time you read a modern poem and laughed at a line or throughout the entire poem? I haven’t since I read some limericks on a restroom stall in a dive bar a decade or so ago.