Something to remember

Homeless Christ by Timothy Schmalz

The Forgotten

I have looked for them in the dark back alleys,             

the sleepless nights,                                                                      

the littered streets,                                                     

trampled church steps,                                               

the candles that flicker on the Saintly altars,                

furniture in tenement apartments freshly dressed with plastic covers
and the names gathering dust on mailboxes in the hall and the big cemetery. 

I looked for them in needles going into veins,                   

Joseph going to prison,                                                      

Julia dropping out of seventh grade,                   

Carmen crumbling slowly beside her bottle, 

Hector with an arm banished by a bullet to a city owned incinerator. 

I searched the shadows on all the corners,
the river where five-year-old Sonia drowned,                        

the old buses, steel wheeled trains,                                             

the stars and invisible wind and the
Angels never come. 

now, I know they have forgotten us
and cannot see orfeel people who live below.  

© h.j. Recinos