Neighbor News
Being Homeless in the United States as a Citizen and Taxpayer
Does anyone ever release the person from homelessness, a permanent underclass, to live an American life again without discrimination?
Patricia Louise McGurk
I used to walk in parking lots in the evening twilight, wearing my nicest coat and clothes as a girl or a woman so people would think I had a car parked there and would not call me "homeless". So they would think I had a home to go to at night, each and every night. I stood and searched for the keys to the house that did not exist in the United States of America.
I worked for years of my life and paid taxes. I almost believed that one day I would earn enough money to own a car, or a home of my own, or pay rent successfully for at least one year in an apartment and feel I was safe in the United States.
I at least dreamed of owning a nice car that I could rest in at night, and pretend it was my home. I dreamed in parking lots that I was a real person in the United States.
Copy of Email to a Family Member from Patricia Louise McGurk: Dear Ada,, I just received your email or didn't see it until now. Which poem are you referring to - the one about the American man? I don't think I put it on the blog - I forgot I had created one and without my own computer and having to walk in over 100 degree heat from the homeless shelter, I haven't been in a position to stay as up-to-date as I usually am on my personal life, beyond survival on a day-to-day basis. It really is almost impossible to write anything in depth or a book while facing homelessness, beyond compilations of short pieces I have written which I have not published yet.
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My writing that I was focusing on that included "Compassion", my short story and others I have had to put on the back of the stove, and turn off the flames for cooking, if you know what I mean. The writing on the American man is part of my book about The American Executive on the Holocaust Landscape, remember that? I have three introductions so far, and a few inserts. This is one or a map for one.
I found a bank that let me withdraw money - that is quite a lot considering all the crimes against me publicly in the United States. I haven't bought a card yet for minutes for the cell phone as I am short of money and am not sure of which plan I want to choose.
I hope you are happy and eating plenty of food - I worry about you every day, that you don't have enough food.
Love,
Patricia Louise McGurk
Sample of My Recent Creative Writing:
The American Man
by Patricia Louise McGurk
© 2015 Initial Draft written or composed
Wednesday, July 08, 2015 9:39 am)
They call me a man with a glad hand
The politician shaking hands glad to meet
Everyone in multi-ethnic democracy
A Jester with a jingle bell hat
The American salesman and executive
Of some estate or the Estate
(he said)
But I’m not Kris Kringle or
The Playmate of the year
I am not an atrocity committer, either
I am not a glad man or a sad man
I am a warrior, an American warrior
A cheerful bright and chipper
Chip off the old block or the Gipper
A dapper man, a well-dressed handsome man
An American man no one understands
I am a principled man
not a Chippendale dancer or Mr. Bojangles
nor a Mojo man
but I am not an atrocity man
the American man
a Principled Man
tell them I am a man of Principle
do they know what that means?
He said
It means I live in isolation, never speaking
Maybe in my dreams I am the King of Spain
Or even a Communist or Democracy King in a kingdom I define
Perhaps I am not just an American man
Living in isolation
Away from the beauty diminishing they say I am
Destroying the beauty
Or even the country and its environmental beauty
But where is it?
In a cloud somewhere in a cloudless sky
In a cloud city I left a long time ago
In Drug Dreams I no longer dream
Now my son smokes real drugs, pretending
it is tobacco and harmless
while lecturing us about second-hand smoke
or I lecture or someone lectures while he inebriates
himself and my grandchild with the smoky drugged air around him
do I have a son? Is he really one or my replacement
already?
What beauty did I ever destroy?
On a cloud in a cloudless sky called America?
Why is the Son of God important and not the Father?
What happened to God, the Father?
Nothing moves me in this air prison
Where I am suffocating as a glad-handed man
Or a man too old to change
Smiling graciously and shaking hands with everyonein democracy
Now they even call me a “Nazi Silver Hair” what does that mean? That my hair is gray or grey?without a part in Life?
Me, the happy man the man with a smile
The Travelling Executive with dissolving businesses
And dissolute temperaments around me
Inferiority still surrounds me
I’ll tell you I never had a son he said
My replacement
The man who took my parking place and my
Corner Office stole my photo of my Mustands
My Corvettes and they are now his?
I doubt it that the son I neverhad will steal from me
The man I prepared a place at the table for
Who doesn’t look like me either the Strangers
Who appeared at the door and called me a has-been
Someone who never lived a life in the United States
Did all the work achieved excellence and the stranger
Arrived to laugh at my awards
And certificates on the walls in the business world
Broke the glass on my certificates and my Diplomans
Replaced the glass with plastic and lectured me about
The environment?
Doesn’t that count for anything, my achievements
Their revolution matters that is all that they have the nerve to call American
I am not the playmate or the man with the robe opening
Dancing for entertainment
Or the boy with slippers I have boots
Executive shoes are enough
But I will be damned it he the stranger will wear my shoes
The younger man yelling at me with contempt on his face
And his girfriend’s face
Sometimes I grieve even contempt on my daughter’s face
I worry
That everything is going up in smoke
In the air
That people will really believe that I never lived
That I really am a glad man shaking hands
Shaking everyone’s hand and smiling
A people-pleaser they called me and made me angry
me the handsome man
the American man
A personal record of my views on privacy and personal safety - the high importance of both, intertwined. Patricia Louise McGurk (from personal correspondence on 2-24-2017)
