Will Homelessness Exist in a New Values System?

This is the voice of the homeless, I feel.  Are they equal to you…?

Of course.  They are you. We are family in truth.  When that is experienced homelessness disappears for good!

 

A NEW VALUE SYSTEM

 

I am without a home,

I am homeless,

I am less without a home,

For a home is where I belong,

Anywhere else is the song of failure.

 

Is a home where the heart is?

Or is it a shelter?

Is it a place I can rest?

Or am I restless?

For I cannot settle down,

I do not want to stay,

For the ray of hope,

Has faded in the sky of my night,

As I seek a ditch,

For I am ditched by society,

I am not wanted,

For no-one cares,

If I am on the street or incomplete,

And that is the deepest loss of all,

For how can I recover?

How can I find cover?

From the storm in my soul.

 

So now I do not care about me,

I am a faceless face,

I mark my territory,

I get to know the feral on the streets of pain,

For they are stained,

They are strained to breaking point,

They are dysfunctional,

But what does that mirror,

But the dysfunction of social structures,

Where buildings are erected,

Out of stone,

For they are cold and functional,

They do not meet demand,

For they are not listening to demands,

The structure of the system,

Erects barriers to conscience,

Beyond belief.

 

For many are not conscious of the barriers,

The stigmatization of non conformity,

Is seen as a pity,

For the stigma is in the eye,

For many cannot see,

Reality.

 

For there is a process that one must enter,

There is a career path,

There are stages of the life cycle,

Where the empty nest is no longer dependent on obligations,

For they have flown the nest and made their way,

But what if the way is unknown?

What if job falls through

the floor boards?

For there is nothing solid on which to stand,

For standards are rules by which we judge,

And homelessness is the smudge on a society erected in the formation of facades,

For losers evoke guilt,

They are guilty as charged,

Condemned as incapable,

Not valued in an economic transaction,

For they are a cost on the balance sheet,

For the assets are stacked against them.

 

Yet their true value is not in status,

It is in a common humanity,

It is in the sanity of a civilization,

Where the people are served by economies of scale,

Not the scale of economies,

Where a new value system is implied,

Is tied to the wellbeing of all,

For this is the wellspring that ushers in,

The phoenix from the ashes,

For the potential in each human face,

Is unlimited,

When it is believed,

That there is no failure,

Only the failure to care,

For a member of the family,

In which we all share.

Mohandas Gandhi

“Nobody can hurt me without my permission.”

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