Dark Things on a Sunny Day

Sitting in bright sunshine I'm dealing with dark things. Wearing my black clerical running shorts, sitting under a Palm Tree, feeling salt stick to my skin ... a Neil Young song is running through my brain ... and the siren wails while the system fails in the steaming heat people walk on the street people can't run and hide if you want to feel good you gotta be inside ... Hot weather is as bad for people as cold weather will ever be. Sure, people freeze to death sleeping outside but more die from heat strokes. At one point yesterday I was frustrated and fired off an email to a group working to do something about it. They are all wonderful , caring people doing amazing things but my Caribbean soul still has a corporate heart so I gave my critique of our progress. It was ... of course ... unsolicited. And ... of course ... I haven't heard back from anybody. The ocean and age have taught me patience. I can wait. The tide will evenutally come in. And there's my friend Kat. She and I go way back. She's one of the sweetest people I've ever met and when I was going through hell, she parked herself in the lobby of Union Mission, refusing to not be seen until she could see me. I was tired and sad and heartbroken when she was ushered in. She smiled, told me she loved me, and gave me gifts. In other words, she stuck her hand straight inside my heart and massaged it while it ached. Then she quoted the Major Prophet Bob Marley ... Everything's gonna be alright." I remember crying then and it brings tears to my eyes as I write this. Kat works trying to organize efforts to help homeless people throughout Georgia. Every year she fights for money because bureaucrates can't find the application which is burried under stacks of paper of a recently retired Government employee. To keep things going, she used her credit card and borrowed money off her house to pay the folks helping her. The Government promises that it's going to be taken care of but nothings happened. In the meantime, her house of 27 years is in foreclosure and she's seriously contemplating working at Wall Mart. It all pisses me off and leaves me in a dark mood on a sunny day. So I'm talking to God. "This is bullshit you know," I pray. She says nothing in response which further darkens my mood. In the silence I wonder if I'm talking to the wrong person. It's those shitheads we've elected and the people they've hired I should be talking to. It's the people who run health care in America. I should talk to them too ... again ... dammit. I buy my drugs from Canada because they're so much cheaper ... seriously an 80% savings and they deliver it to my door without me having to drive to CVS ... it saves gas. Homeless people stalk me out at The Breakfast Club because their appointment at the J.C. Lewis Health Center is three months away for ... an emergency! They still believe I can do something about it. The sun tops the Palm Tree beathing me in light. I think God broke back into the conversation. "Alright," I sigh. "I know, I got shit to do." So I go to work.