The boys out there in the park.
By: Rob Cullen
Tags: Homelessness, Resistance Poetry, Poetry On Medium, Social Commentary, Free Verse

foto©robcullen20151022

The boys out there in the park.

…

I remember seeing you,

that first day, sitting in the stink

of the wet flagged floor

of a green walled prison cell in 82.

…

A young blond haired boy,

looking so much younger

than the ten years of age

of the birth date you gave.

…

And thirty three years

have passed since then,

but you greet me with the same

mischievous narrow lipped grin.

…

In all the years I’ve known you,

that bit of you has never changed

through the visits I’ve made

and all the prisons we name,

…

like some mad tourist guide

of the broken and lost years.

And you still call me

by my first name,

…

as you’ve always done.

“How are you?” you ask,

when you shake my hand

with the firm grip of an old friend.

…

And I have reminded you,

so many times over these years,

that you are a miracle

to have survived and able

…

to tell your tale. A tale

I know you will never tell again.

You ask if the book is written

about you and your friends,

…

the boys out there in the park.

“Not yet” I say. Realising again,

I know your story off by heart,

if that is the right phrase to use.

…

For I am the history man.

A man who has reluctantly stored,

like a cursed gift, the stories,

over forty working years of each boy

…

and each girl, each woman and man,

who has shared their secrets at a time

when life for each one had become

too hard, just too hard, and too much,

…

for each of you alone to bear.

And I have held your stories

in the knowing confidence

of some cloaked priest.

…

For I am the history man,

wishing that I could let go

of all those stories told and heard,

of all those stories I know.

…

But feeling that if I do let go,

it would be just another betrayal

in such a long and pitiless

unforgiving list of humiliations.

…

I ask you about Jason

and hear you say

words I’d half expected,

“Oh Jason — he’s ‘gone on’.”

…

And so, one by one, the boys

in the park take their leave.

Young men who should,

by rights, have lived long lives.

…

But drugs, alcohol and those memories

that stalked their waking day,

the nights of endless terror,

and the trap of silence

…

inevitably take their toll.

And one of the boys in the park,

homeless for fifteen years,

who still greets me each day,

…

smiling tells me his news,

“I have a home at last.

A home to go to,

to get in out of this rain”

…

But the boy still sits in the park,

sheltering from the remorseless

disdain of an unforgiving world,

lacking in compassion or the ability

…

to refrain from heaping and piling

on your too-broad shoulders

the unending blame for all

that is wrong with the cruel,

virtual selfishness of their digital,

shallow, flat-screen world.

…

I greet each one of you

I meet… pleased to see

that you have not “gone on.”

For I am the history man.

…

©robcullen13072015.

foto©robcullen20151022.

The top foto is the almost idyllic Autumnal scene of the Park in October, the avenue littered with the multi-colours of fallen leaves from London Plane trees.

Yet all around on the park benches, the shelters in the football and cricket fields, the hidden places, men and women have gathered to drink cheap alcohol, do some drugs. All have come from broken homes, have suffered violence of one kind or another since childhood and are broken — profoundly emotionally and psychologically damaged. They are the familiar sights of beggars on our streets that we either see or more likely don’t. All have been involved with children’s care services or of public services of one kind or another, in and out of prison, psychiatric hospital, refuges, homeless hostels, and anything else you’d like to name.

…

The bottom foto, the bridge and underpass, is one of the places where the young ones go…the new ones….when the weather turns bad

…

This is not a sob story, an invitation to feel sorry or pity for them…pity is the last thing they want, the last thing these people need.

…

They all have names.

…

Don’t we all want to be recognised?

…

They all have names. They are the result, the product of the destruction of our society, they are not the cause of that destruction as so many privileged people like to label them. They all have names.

…

After all we all have names!

…

©robcullen23092020.