I am reminded again
as though I didn’t know
down in the broken
homeless camps
down at the curb
down by the
Bryant St shelter
under the overpass
where people chased away
the water-torture trucks
at the foot of the condo of
the latest ambitious
scapegoater aiming
for higher office
we are down here
mighty in the gutter
playing the fools
of liberation
because they stole
all our chains
he said ‘it was all those
occupy drunks who
tossed the tea into the Bay’
the crackbrained who sit
outside everything
backs to the wall
writing our manifestos
in every layer of meaning
the same cry and call
we are hearing
out of what is arising
out of this cracking
heard round the world
it is we
who have nothing at all
who are simply everything
— Sarah Menefee
San Francisco poet and organizer Sarah Menefee is a long-time homeless rights activist. She is the Homeless Desk on the People’s Tribune Editorial Board, and a founding member of such organizations as the San Francisco Union of the Homeless, Homes Not Jails and 'First they came for the homeless’. Known for her poetry about the streets, her latest collections are Winter Rose, Sign and Holy Eel.
