APRIL 4, 2025 POETRY Night pace PEDRO CAMPOS Groundcover vendor No. 652 Night softens Happening states Rough routine From the window, I see The haze in my mind As I go for a walk Kicking some rocks On the cadence of life Waves flow at the slope Only stars shadowing me The river, the current Our entropy The howl of wolves and wind Pulses in my chest Fine entropy A dark mystery The time spent On moonlight silent Infinite focus pocus Dancing candle’s flame Inventions magic In absolute focus The candle’s flame magic inventions Endure or wake How could I know The taste of being slave or king I can only recognize the hills I leaped The dust I raised Turns echoes into whispers Footsteps stretch longer The earth breathes wider Clocks slow the thought Night can be more than hush Holds what day lets slip away Rain all over Wet, I woke Time becomes thick It bends the air Thick for the things unsaid Hums on waking sleeping streets Within the first daylight My last words Rolling on my pillow She says: Come back From the slit, I glimpse her shadow I turn myself for a moment Her silhouette dances like a flame I enter with a smile Leaving everything in standby Wide-eyed PEDRO CAMPOS MIRELLA MARTIUS Those blade-cotton words of yours— at once striking deep wounds and softening my surrendered heart. I will turn your smile into art. Paint it, frame it, and hang it on every shard of my fractured heart. Your smile—when it stretches wide, when it turns wicked, when it becomes Mona Lisa. The void and the fullness overflow as my bewildered eyes behold the moon licking the waters of the sea. Springtime LA SHAWN COURTWRIGHT Groundcover writer Spring is in the air I wanna bask in the sun without a care Look over here and there And admire the tulips when they bloom Let the sun shine in my living room And when I go out it’s always a pleasure to see The robins, butterflies, and bees And the pink and white blossoms on the trees Oh how I love the springtime breeze I love the Lord Jesus Christ LA SHAWN COURTWRIGHT I love the Lord Jesus Christ I want the gift of the Holy Spirit With all my will and might May I be granted it And be able to live a holy sanctified life INSTITUTIONS page 5 get sicker instead of better as they “pump you full of medications and keep you sick with other problems.” Another buddy, who is a Black male, feels their primary care practice doesn’t do appropriate preventative testing. An experience of a female buddy has been that as a result of bias from a historical psychiatric diagnosis, side-effects from a medication used to treat asthma and allergies was missed. Instead of considering evidence of medical problems, doctors often prescribe heavy antipsychotics that are known to cause or worsen conditions including diabetes, sleep apnea and tardive dyskinesia. Overall, the experience for many homeless individuals includes a compounding effect of missed complications, under-diagnoses or under-treatment of chronic conditions, and untreated environmental exposures. It could be said homeless people are caught in a cycle of institutionalization and deinstitutionalization, as many have the experience of incarceration, hospitals, psychiatric wards, shelters, programming and unsheltered homelessness. Despite homeless people being included in scholarly definitions of institutionalized, not all homeless buddies who provided input for this article identify as ever being institutionalized. While the statistics suggest many who are homeless do have specialized needs, a scholarly challenge to current housing approaches asserts that the approaches are based in a medical model of assessment, promote spatial segregation, and perpetuate system cycling. A 2022 article in the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, called "The Modern Day Asylum," suggests current approaches to housing are focused on sickness rather than healing, and pathologizing homelessness has created retraumatizing structures that force people into a lifetime of vulnerability and dependency. Our Hands LORRAINE LAMEY Groundcover contributor When we wash our hands of it, we mean we pilot our attention away from what we have done, what we have failed to do. It is not just scrubbing out the dirt or blood ground-in to our hands, but the very deed itself. When we wash someone's feet, we mean we humble ourselves to serve another's needs, our hands close and tight with the grime of the travels and travails of their feet. As our hands are drenched in the sullied water, we look up to meet the face of the Beloved, beholding Love. GROUNDCOVER NEWS 9
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