where the streets have no name

Sometimes it catches me off guard. I walk in and it's loud, someone's screaming and I can't quite figure out why. A woman, she's in the corner and she's rocking back and forth. There's a guy over there in a wheelchair, he's nodding off and I think he might fall over, his cap says something about being a vet on it. The line for the clinic is long, folks are coughing and no one is smiling. My eyes, they meet hers and her pain is so palpable I look away, I look away and I keep walking and I feel the sting. Everyone looks so tired. I see an old timer and his eyes light up. We momentarily embrace probably harder than necessary but in that moment I am hugging all of it, the pain and the sorrow and the fucking desperation that wraps around my head like a thick winter fog. Words are futile, sometimes this shit just sucks.

As much as I try and spin it the erosion is clear. The warehousing of human beings is wrong at best and things aren't getting better and really it's worse. Folks are sicker and older and sometimes the weight of the endless suffering and bags of belongings and the limping and the crying kids and the vacant stares and the weathered fingers and the old shoes and I could go on and on and it's simply too much. The beauty is there, it always is if you look hard enough but the suffering has it's own flavor, strong like a red chile or a head of raw garlic, it's there and you taste it and no amount of water can soften it's bite.

It's time to send us your May Just Posts. The Just Post Roundtable is coming up on June 10th so between now and the 7th we invite you to send us links to posts on social issues and justice, ones you've written or ones you've read. You can send them to me at girlplustwo(at)yahoo(dot)com and everyone is welcome and it's free and we don't rely on animal testing or kill any trees in the process so there are no more excuses. Join us.