The stark white walls seem to scream ‘sanctuary’

across from the layered wooden fences, imported ’natives,'

it houses calm for the imported natives,

light pastel rows of apartments for those

willing to make a home by the sea;

here stands a place to be

for the new bohemian cast-out-but-in

looking for comfort beside labelled trash bins

under berries so wild man dares not eat

from roads made for soles but never feet.

Escapism is the word for those who may not,

for fear of rejection, or of getting caught,

slip away into something true and cold

and wild and untread and new and old,

for the square is home and the cross is hearth

in the land of never-erring dearth

of compassion and hands and truth to be told-

what good is the truth when it’s already sold?

Piled in chests and banks and cars,

and real is found in the streets and bars

and beds of teenage lovers, always,

till oldness and holidays close in by days.

Fill up your belly, fill up the page,

reminds me of times burning thyme with sage

in hopeless homes for a sense of constraint,

till fasting meets world and head’s growing faint;

Martyrs in these days never grow to be saints.