'TIL DEBT DO US PART

Every couple has money problems.

Doesn't matter if you're living in Trump Tower, a condo in West Palm, a double-wide in Georgia, a tenement in Chicago, a farmhouse somewhere out there in Indiana, or a cardboard box in Homeless Nation, at some point, you will argue about money.

Where it comes from, where it's going, where it went so fast, why there isn't enough, and who gets to decide all of the above. 

Big or small, two people can chisel each other down to rubbles of seething, sneering, snarling mutated replicants of the same two people who once said, in all sincerety..."For richer, for poorer," and the part we like best, "and to you, all my worldly goods I do you endow."

Whether you went through the formal procedures of the frilly dress and wedding cake, or a quick flight to Vegas, or just promised to share the dough you got from selling your food stamps here in Homeless Nation when you hooked up at the feed at the parking lot outside the Greyhound bus station, it's all the same, you're a couple, only difference is, if you're in Homeless Nation you won't have to go through the fearsome...sometimes awesome cost  and trauma of a divorce when you or the significant other decides to throw in the towel, or whatever it is that will get you the domestic violence beef, the restraining order and ultimately the decree that says..."faggadaboudit!"

Now, if you're living large in Trump Tower, you're probably arguing about the yacht, or buying the two thousand dollar Prada hand bag rather than the ratty thousand dollar one, and in West Palm, pretty much, expect you can exchange Prada for Versace;  the folks in the double-wide in Georgia are fussin' about the cost of replacing the tatty roof one of you bought from some grifter...who then didn't bother to nail it down; the couple in the tenement in Chicago are close to a meltdown bickering over who it was who sold the coffee table to finance a night on the town (neighborhood dive) ; and the nice people in that farmhouse are struggling to figure out what the guy at the bank meant when he said all of those things about refinancing the mortgage and then handed you papers it will take the Rosetta Stone to figure out.

Now, all of these stressed out couples can use some fiscal therapy, but the people we are concerned with here are the streetpuppies in that cardboard box - or under somebody's porch, or an overpass somewhere here in Homeless Nation, who have no idea who is Prada or Versace, have not had a roof in sometime and would probably burn it for firewood if they did, same deal with a coffee table, and to whom the concept of refinancing went out the broken window the day they were locked out of their own place, and today, and in the recent (anywhere from three days to years) past couldn't put two quarters together if their life depended upon it.

Now, that's stress.

And let's get back to the basics here as mentioned above.

 First, where the moolah is coming from.

Well, it isn't.  And if there's no substantive government help, it won't.  And the finger pointing starts here.  Who's not working, why they're not working, whose turn is it to 'fly the sign' with some ridiculous legend on a piece of cardboard claiming they have to support 12 children and could somebody passing them by on the median they are standing on, please slow down long enough to throw a buck or two their way.

Then we have the Where's it going?  Ok, one of you might need some new socks, the others just up and walked away after wearing them for thirty days in a row, but one of you needs some dental floss, why in heaven we do not know because both of you are down to just a couple of teeth after a long time without dental care.  Or it could be one of you flew the sign and then stopped on your way back to the cardboard box or the underpass to buy an 18-pack of the cheap beer and enjoy the rest of the day by deluding yourself into thinking that buzz will last forever.  Not good.  And don't even think about lying about it, the smell of 18 beers ingested over the period of three hours will linger.

For the questions, where it went so fast, and why there isn't enough....see "Where's it going?"

Who gets to decide all of the above is where it gets tricky.

Neither of you is in a position here to hold the high ground when it comes to deciding who is the most fiscally efficient, and or morally and ethically responsible enough to take charge of the family checkbook  -if you were, you wouldn't be here  -or in this case left pocket down of the backpack one of you pinched from another sreetpuppy while they were sleeping. 

Yeah, it gets that bad.  Some of the streetpuppies stoop to just plain meanness when it gets desperate.

And it's pretty desperate when one of you is about to be  stranded at the bus station because you have no bus pass for one of you, and you need two people to lug that huge cooler which contains all of the bottled water you nicked so that you can sell it to happy travelers passing by the median you are headed to.

See, and this is where the 'til debt do us part' comes in.

This seemingly minor altercation is going to explode into an all out battle for your lives...until the po po comes and takes you off to the clink...and now you have more stuff on your sheet, and when you get out, you both have restraining orders so you can't go near each other to finish the decision making process over who gets to lug the cooler.

So, another marriage/hookup goes South. 

Money doesn't really make the world go round, but here in Homeless Nation, it is the deciding factor in the longevity -or lack thereof - of every marriage, hookup, one night stand.

And before you think of sharing a troth, a vow or endowing anything, or just sharing the same piece of cardboard as a mattress...you might wanna remember this little ditty streetpuppy once heard at a wedding celebration.  A toast given to the newly minted bride and groom by a guest who had been overserved.

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
 a medley of extemporanea,
and love is a thing that can never go wrong,
and I...am the Queen of Rumania.

THE WAR ON DRUGS FOR DUMMIES AND STREET PUPPIES

Out there, somewhere in that other nation, why, there is rumor of a whole army committed to eradicating weed, pills, rock, ice, uppers, downers,  you name it, anything that puffs, fumes, tastes good, tastes bad, bangs you in the head, or goes up your nose or in your arm and takes you to the moon, or to your inner child,  or to the corner one more time, or to the last battering ram in hell.

Anyway, that's what we in homeless nation hear.

A whole war devoted to eradicating and interdicting, and snuffing out all that stuff that makes you happy, sad, crazy, unconscious, confused, deluded.....in trouble with that guy in the uniform who just slapped the cuffs on you. In more trouble with the significant other who had no idea what life with an addict is really like.

And according to the U.S. government which is funding this War on Drugs, we have at one time or another in the  course of this war the government has declared  -  declared in an abstraction  of words so imprecise, we cannot tell if the phrase means that there is a war someplace that is high on drugs, or that we are fighting drugs....turned the corner. 

In fact, we've turned the corner in the war on drugs so many times, we can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel that leads to the next corner to be turned in the war on drugs leading to the end of the tunnel.

That would be the tunnel dug all the way from Juarez, Mexico to just under the White House, and right under the noses of the Secret Service, the Pentagon, the FBI and the DEA.

DEA means Drug Enforcement Administration.  And it is the agency that President  Richard Nixon thunk up to confuse and tee off all of the people in the FBI who thought that interdicting and eradicating and snuffing out was their job.

In fact, President Nixon started this whole thing when he invented the Drug Enforcement Administration in 1973 because his statement in  June of 1971 when he first uttered those fateful words, "War on Drugs." in a speech explaining that we had to do something about the use and abuse of illegal drugs which practice had become "Public Enemy Number One." went right over our heads.

The President didn't know at the time, that soon, he would be glorified as Public Enemy Number One, but well, he had to do something.  Even Elvis was nagging him  about the use and abuse of drugs.  Ahem.

Anyway, here in homeless nation we hear all about this war, and then we look around and say, what war?  Where?  How many soldiers?  Think they got some extra food stamps??  Or a bus pass??!!

See, here in homeless nation, drugs are alive and well, and living it up, and kicking the butts of about eighty percent of the street puppies.

That's right.  eighty percent.

Now, this is not one of those scientific polls.  You know, the ones where some person making seven bucks an hour plus commission for every call, phones you up at dinner time and says, "So...are you homeless and do you snort coke?  uh, huh...what about rock?  Meth?  Oh, and pills...

No.  See...the likelihood of any street puppy answering any question on the phone -when they can get one...or worse talking to a guy on the street with a clipboard, a sheet of paper filled with questions and a pen is slim to none.  Not even when the guy with the clipboard tosses the street puppie a few pair of socks, and or a couple bottles of water.

No, this is not one of those scientific polls.  This poll is not about statistics, or facts.  This poll is about the realpolitik of the situation regarding the use and abuse of drugs - all drugs - by street puppies.

This is a poll that has been taken in a survey of street puppies who actually live on the street. or any street puppy who meets the criteria for being homeless which, according to the federal government, is anybody who did not have a fixed address to sleep at last night.

A survey in which you count the dead,  the near dead, the could have died last night, the lost the third job in a month, the can't or won't feed the family because the rock comes first, the I meant to pay you back but I ran into my crack dealer on the corner, the I just got out of jail and I need to borrow a few bucks for another hit, or a 4pack... or Vicodin or Oxy...the I just can't get it together  to get something to eat because I have to stop the shakes first,  the I made fifty bucks in two hours panhandling at the corner and I spent it all on crack within about ten minutes, The my boyfriend beat the crap out of me because he was high and I wouldn't give him my food stamp money for another hit. The I'm so sorry I stole your stuff and sold it but I needed to get high survey.

Yeah, that survey.

The survey that tells you everything you did not want to know about how rampant the use and abuse of drugs really is in homeless nation. And how it kicks the butts of eighty percent of the street puppies on any given day.

And to anybody who insists the figure is more like, oh, 17 percent.

We say, you must have your head in that tunnel dug from Juarez, Mexico to just under the White House.

TOP TEN REASONS TO REALLY HATE THAT YOU ARE HOMELESS

You don't have a TV anymore  

Because you don't have a TV anymore you don't know who got kicked off the island in "Survivor."

Dinner is for the birds.  Literally.  Last night you ate  popcorn, raisins and nasty zucchini chips.

You miss having a car.  And a house.  And you regret that you ever griped  about either one.

You miss listening to the songs of the seventies (or eighties or nineties) and singing along while you're folding laundry.

You don't have laundry to fold because you don't have clothes anymore that are worth cleaning.

No matter how many 'feeds' you go to you just can't bring yourself to eat whatever that mystery dish is.

You miss the monthly trip to Saks for the facial and massage and waxing and dishing with the masseuse.

You miss the neighbor's cat.  The fat one who you fed every day because her owner was stingy with food.

And the number one reason  you hate that you are homeless:  You hate that you seem to have become downright cynical about the nature of  some street puppies and the next time one of them asks you for a cigarette or a quarter, you're going to go bananas.

And you never knew that you could think that way.

TOP TEN REASONS TO BE GLAD YOU ARE HOMELESS

You won't have to worry if you left the TV on when you left home...or, lord forbid...the iron!

You won't have to watch any more episodes of "Survivor."  -heck, you're LIVING Survivor.

You won't have to figure out where you put your car keys again.  That goes for house keys, too.

You can serve popcorn, raisins and zucchini chips for dinner, and nobody will complain.

No more folding laundry!!

No more laundry!  (just toss the dirty stuff and get a voucher for new stuff)

Nor more counting calories!  (You're officially on the eat it where you can, even if you hate it diet.)

No more bikini waxes!

You don't have to be nice to the neighbor you hate anymore....you don't have a neighbor.

And the number one reason to be glad you are homeless:  You will learn what you are really made of.

And you can't buy that kind of action anywhere.

DEAD MEN WALKING

In poker, 'Dead Men Walking' is used to describe a player who is drawing dead, and has no chance of winning.

In the workplace, the phrase is used to describe an employee who is certain to be fired in the future.

And of course, due to  those wonderful folks who brought us the movie starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn, the phrase is most often now thought of as the  unenviable title of a death row  prisoner on his terminal walk to eternity.

In prison, also, the phrase is a warning that an inmate who is on death row is walking by and caution should be shown since the dead man walking wouldn't hesitate to kill someone seeing as the death row prisoner is already dead.

And all of the above interpretations are fitting descriptions of so many street puppies in homeless nation.

Which probably explains,  - does not excuse, but does explain -  the cavalier attitude shown by so many street puppies when one of their number has actually been found dead. 

Doesn't matter where.  In the river, in a ditch, under a bush, behind an abandoned building, under a car, or as was recently the case, the unfortunate soul, found lying face down right outside police headquarters.

 The  most usual response to the news of the newly departed dead man walking, is a slow nod or shaking of the head,  a look of somber wisdom, and maybe, a muttered , 'too bad, he was a good guy.'

And nobody really bothers to find out  what happened.  It is assumed that he was, just another dead man walking.

And the the cause of the fatal turn could be an unattended illness, or an accident, or a slow, steady descent into hell.

 Most street puppies cannot afford doctors, and are put off by the rituals of the local emergency room, so common maladies like diabetes, high blood pressure, heart problems, vascular problems, and the like go undetected or untreated until it is too late.

 Or he's not watching where he's going, and steps into traffic, or trips over his own bike, or has one too many for the road and the road is a dead end for him,  and the dead man walking ends up lying face down in in a river, a ditch, under a bush, behind an abandoned building, under a car or right outside police headquarters.

Or  he has given up any hope of getting out of homeless nation. Maybe it was the last phone call home which resulted in yet another argument with a spouse or parent or sibling.

 Or the inability to deal with the death of a family member he had not seen in so very long , and had no chance to say good bye to, or to mend whatever fracas had started the estrangement.

Or the news that a family he had abandoned and shattered had been put back together by another man.

Or the sickness in the pit of his stomach everytime he thought of how he could no longer afford the simplest pleasures life had to offer.

Or the dawning  knowledge that, at a deep spiritual level, he simply felt always ashamed.

 So he started drinking and/or drugging his way through it.  Night and day. Staying high became the mistress he craved, pursued and gorged himself with.

Alcohol is cheap, and plentiful by the can, especially the cheaper brands that are guaranteed to eat your brain and stomach away.

Crack and pills are even cheaper, by the unit anyway.

But after awhile, the cost of maintaining that kind of high is prohibitive and adds yet another sordid ingredient to the bubbling cocktail of misery -  the high costs of incarceration, not only the bruises suffered inside the jail, but the deep bruising to the soul.

And at last, the street puppie will be consumed by the fires of addiction, or the utter sadness which saturates his spirit, or the jumbled thinking resulting from the constant supply of alcohol or drugs, which then results in  the deadly misjudgements which lead to stepping off the curb at the wrong time, tumbling off the bike, or just simply falling into the river.

And the street puppy becomes just another poker player drawing dead; another employee bound to be fired; another man on the terminal stroll to his unenviable end, Another name on the long list of  Dead Men Walking.

YOU JUST MIGHT BE HOMELESS IF......

It takes a while for street puppies to get used to the idea that they are homeless, rootless, and sometimes clueless.

The initial glow of recognition could be the idea that maybe your key in the lock isn't working because it has been changed by (1) an irate landlord who won't buy the story again that your pay check was lost in the mail because of the tornado three states away  (2) an irate spouse who knows your check was not lost in the mail because of that tornado because you were too drunk the past few weeks to know there was a tornado (3) the landlord and the spouse who decided life was too short for them to deny the deep and passionate love they had discovered  for each other after you lost your job and did nothing but drink for the past few weeks.

Anyway, here you are in homeless nation, wandering around like one of those lost souls who cannot bear to leave this planet even, sometimes  for years after they have been pronounced no longer breathing. 

That initial glow of recognition, that dawning that something is wrong with your life, is beginning to turn into a fog that glowers all around you as you wander through this totally foreign terrain called homeless nation.

In an effort to help you find your way back, it is first important to know where you really are, so here are some clues  for clueless street puppies... kind of a psychic GPS to help you through the fog.

YOU  JUST  MIGHT  BE  HOMELESS  IF.....

You have used the rest room today in five different places, and you can't remember where they were...

You are wearing a back pack that contains band aids, antibiotic cream, used kleenex, five combs, two pair of dirty socks,  a wet rain poncho, one running shoe, a week old pack of peanut butter cookies, a small can of cocktail weiners, a can opener, and a broken flashlight, a two week old mystery meat sandwich, two half full packs of nasty cigars.....and a whole bunch of leaves and small twigs.

The guy behind the counter at the corner 7-11, tenses up everytime you reach into your pocket to withdraw some change for the dollar a pack of nasty cigars...

The guy behind the counter at the corner 7-11 watches you like a hawk anytime you go near or past the beer cooler...

The guy behind the counter at the corner 7-11 washes his hands after taking your change for the dollar a pack nasty cigars...

You have memorized the numbers on every police car cruising within a five mile radius, armed with this knowledge, you will be able to determine if that car has passed you one too many times while you have been sitting on that bus stop bench...

You have worn the same pair of pants for one week, and when it is time to change, you simply turn them inside out...

Nobody will let you pet their dog....

Women with small children pull back when you approach them on the street....

The security guard who patrols the lobby of the bank you have kept your account in for twenty years, follows you at short range from the moment you enter the bank to cash a check for five-dollars......

The shoes you are wearing are a size too small, or a size too big, and they stink, which is ok,  because they stunk when you picked them up at the give away pile at the feed last week...

You have despaired of finding a comfortable spot to spend the night, so now you are right at home curled up around a bush just two feet away from an expressway with traffic whizzing by all night long...

Your hair has not been cut, combed, de-snarled or shampooed lately, more and more you are looking like the infamous Nick Nolte mug shot...

But you don't know that, because now the only rest room you are allowed into is the one where they took out all the mirrors to discourage people like you from taking the morning bath in there...

Your shirt has a J.Crew label; your jacket is from Tommy Hilfiger; Your pants are Bongo, and your baseball cap says NY Yankees.. Your T-shirt says, Harvard....and every item is way too big for you....

You cannot remember the last time you actually ate with utensils that were not plastic...

You cannot remember the last time you actually ate with plates that were not paper...

You cannot remember the last time you actually ate sitting down...

You cannot remember the last time you acatually ate...

You have stopped smiling at pretty girls....

You have stopped looking at pretty girls...

Your eyes tear up when the clerk at the grocery store smirks when she sees the food stamp card you are using to buy the beans and bread...

A good day is when your teeth don't hurt...

A bad day is when your teeth hurt all day long .....

No matter what you do, you cannot get your filthy fingernails clean, so you have taken to biting them right down to the nub...

And a big clue that you are in homeless nation....you have no idea about the quake that hit wherever the last big quake that wiped out a whole country hit, because you haven't seen a television in weeks and cannot afford to buy a paper.

Yup, you're in homeless nation. 

And your shelf life is running low.  Your expiration date may as well be stamped on your forehead.

You've been marginalized,  demoralized, analyzed, and categorized.

 It's time to think about being socialized.

Time to think of an exit strategy, street puppy.  Fast....before the next quake  or tornado hits.

OH, WE OF LITTLE FAITH

In homeless nation, as in all other nations, we suppose the universal meaning of the original of that tidy piece of scripture would mean, better to increase one's faith to counter one's fraility.

Fraility in the face of so many dangers real and imagined while living life on the edge of a precipice of unimaginable stress and vulnerability which is one way of saying homeless nation is a bottomless pit of anxiety and fear and the darkness of the unknown.  In other words, yeccch!

If there are no athiests in foxholes, an aphorism generally credited to journalist Ernie Pyle during World War II to argue that in times of extreme stress and/or fear, one will tend to believe in the protection and forthcoming help of a higher power, then it would also seem that there are no athiests in cardboard boxes, or abondoned cars, or under bridges or bushes or ditches or alleys or wherever it is that street puppies put their weary heads to rest night after endless, sleepless and fretful night.

And If a battlefield -and let's not kid ourselves here, homeless nation is a battlefield - is the place for a conversion, then it follows that all street puppies would wholeheartedly embrace the thought of a higher power coming to rescue us all, kind of like Mighty Mouse in a long nightgown swooping down and taking up our back pack, and leading us to the nearest 7-11 for  huge slurpies and microwaved cheese omelettes.

Alas.  The churches in homeless nation are named after various saints and sects and not one of them is named after Mighty Mouse.  And there aren't too many street puppies sitting around in them unless there's something to eat there, or a place in a pew or on the floor to spread a blanket and get some shut eye, or maybe pick up some socks, one of those nifty hygiene kits or an extra shirt from the donation pile.

Most street puppies got here by some route that put them totally off the idea of a higher power except as a demonic force which swept away their whole life, i.e. husband, wife, parent, boss, mortgage broker, boss, drug dealer, etc.  so there's not a lot of faith left in anything that even smacks of sanctity by the time the street puppy rolls through the gate to this place. 

But there are plenty of those churches named after saints and sects and all of their clergy and their volunteers bushtling  around to take up the role of patron saints of hand-outs. 

They feed us, they clothe us, they gently cajole us into getting onto the right path, and teach us the Bible.

And the teaching the Bible part is usually the appetizer and thus, comes first, before the handouts.

No street puppy in his right mind would stick around AFTER a big meal, or the handouts for the Bible study, or the message or the prayer service. 

So they sit, nodding at all the right places, smiling at all the right places, shaking their heads in all the right places of the delivery of the Word.  All the while thinking of the meat patties waiting, or how many socks they need. Or how much the hygiene kit and a couple of shirts would bring in to enable them to buy another bottle to ease the pain of another long night in that cardboard box, or under that bridge, or in that abandoned car, or the bush, the ditch or the alley, night after sleepless, fretful night.

And they're all here, the people who deliver the Word.  The Protestants, the Catholics, The Muslims, The Jews, the New (fill in the blank) Order of Such and Such, even the Temple of The Blue Parrot. 

The only spiritual advisors who ya don't see much around here, unless they're panhandling at the same street corner  are the Hare Krishna, and that's  because they're begging, too, and why complicate things by begging from the people you're preaching to about Hare or whatever his name is.

See, your average streetpuppy knows the deal. 

These  higher power people want something too.  They want the feel good thing of helping people out.  Ok.  That's usually the volunteers.  And some of them, usually the clergy, want to know they are doing their job well.  That's Ok, too.

 And occasionally, people like Charlie who just fill their car up with  food and neat stuff, and hand it out to street puppies, and talks about his love of Jesus, and is absolutely sincere. And he's all about truly loving his fellow man.   And he's one in a million.

And we know all of them are well meaning, and filled with love of their fellow man, especially the hurtin' ones, and Lord knows they are gaining bonus mileage in Heaven, which in this modern era, should probably  have it's own page on Facebook.  Along with a password and PIN to give St. Peter at the Golden Gates.

And then, there are the others.  The demagogues  and water walkin' wannabes who decide  it's time to start their own church.  Hmmmm..need some dough for that.  I know, donations for the poor!!    And I'll meet some good lookin' women, too!  Yippee! Praise the Lord!  Hallelujah!!

So they start their own church, name it after something, usually themself. And they get a lot of those volunteer need to feel good folks who have excellent recipes capable of feeding about a hundred people at a time.  And they're  in business. And they bellow out the Word.  And the money rolls in, and it's all tax free. 

And then, Lord forbid, sometimes they acquire an old rooming house, and bring street puppies in and take all of the little money they do have and tell them it's being saved  for them.  But first, they need to get a job  to earn that money to be saved, and not drink or do drugs and they will  be given all of their money after six months when they are clean and sober, and have eaten off their own elbows because they can't smoke either.

And of course, the street puppy will opt out of the rooming house and the program long before the six months is done, The church cries "foul,"  and the street puppy has not a dime to show for it.  Or elbows.

And he or she, will be just another athiest in a cardboard box, or the alley, or the ditch, or the bush, you get the picture. 

Yeah, Oh, we of little faith. 

When you think about it.  Maybe some real smart person in homeless nation should start a church named after Mighty Mouse.  They could call it, "Mighty Mouse Temple Of Flying  Caped Rodents In Nightgowns."

The entertainment value alone of a caped rodent clad in a long and flowing nightgown flying around homeless nation, coming to save the day would raise the spirits of every street puppy in homeless nation.