Odd Thoughts: Such are burdens that we bore

I was at my Facebook browsing, I was Twittering and grousing

O’er the dearth of homeless housing and the burden that they bore,

When amidst my wild cantank’ring I befelt a deepfelt hank’ring,

A stirring sort of hank’ring for old Edgar Allen’s lore.

It was from this dark depression that a maundering regression

Stirred within me an accession to reread him, nothing more.

But as I read those words of Poe’s, words of eloquence and prose,

Becoming buried in the woes of the Raven’s “nevermore,”

I befelt a gladness slowing and a madness, sadness growing;

In my soul it was bestowing dark’ning thoughts of his Lenore

And society’s loud grousing, seldom doing, always grousing

O’er the dearth of homeless housing and the burden that they bore.

Now these words, they come betwixt us, twixt the arrogance that picked us,

Fixed us, never kicked us to the dark side of life’s war,

Never stole our soul from in us, not with drugs nor mental illness,

To where the dark would ever lure us and a dark mayor could manure us,

Claiming such an act might cure us and the burden that we bore.

Now despite the condemnation, the contaminant relation

Of the fecal trepidation strips our souls down to the core.

It’s a signal from the leaders we choose, cheaters, bottom feeders,

That we’re bleeders, moaning bleaters, empty pleaders, nothing more.

We don’t stem them, barely hem them or condemn them and their phlegm that

They cast in our direction where our fading insurrection they ignore.

We’re the masses that are huddled, so easily befuddled that the politicians play us

For the simple fools we are and nothing more.

Between us and the homeless lies a chasm of statistics, a dull grey line betwixt us,

A fading line betwixt us, very nearly naught betwixt us, from our leaders it’s

Just one step to the homeless and the burdens that they bore.

I cannot help my wondering if Poe’s Lenore was wandering

Among the homeless, wandering with the homeless and the burdens that they bore

And was she ever wondering a soul-decaying wondering

Like Edgar Allen’s maundering that burned within his core?

Are we destined thus to wonder, destined thus to wander with our souls

Into the shadows of the homeless, of the sadly hardened homeless and the burdens that they bore?

We can always build them shelters, temporary beds and shelters,

Places we perceive as shelters, but they’re for our own protection, nothing more.

And some among us, caring, sharing, building bridges more than shelters,

Win our plaudits, though it’s odd it’s through our audits

That we limit what they do and what it’s for.

Should you wonder how God sees us, just recall the words of Jesus,

Through our faults it’s that they seize us: “They’ll be with us evermore.”