The color of addiction is gray.
It is the color of the lean and hungry ghosts,
stick men and women of the street,
who wander the gray pavement,
caught in desperation's beat.
Gray , the color of hungry ghosts
huddled in gray doorways,
wandering gray pavement,
day on suffering day,
feeding the gray pigeons
who are better-fed than they.
Huddled in gray doorways,
counting hard-scrabble cash,
waiting for the high,
then waiting for the crash.
In their fight to ease the pain,
they begin to wait again.
Counting hard-scrabble cash,
for men and women of the streets,
the feeling of addiction is
future-less and gray,
as they wait for the high,
and then the crash,
the cycle of their suffering,
each and every day.
There is laughter here,
and heart,
and a walking with each other,
side by side,
right where you're at,
nothing to hide.
In these mean streets,
a shared humanity,
service that lasts,
more authentic than
uptown,
where people avert their eyes
from such distress
and hurry past.
But when it comes to hope,
the Lower East Side
is forever painted
gray.
At Verse First today, over at Poets United, Kim has set us the prompt: colored, in all of its meanings: being colorful, seeing the world through rose-colored glasses, the world of associations with regard to being a person of color..........where one gets into the realm of racism, prejudice, stigma, and stereotyping.
Right now I am reading a book titled In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts by Dr. Gabor Mate.
Dr Mate is a doctor for the struggling residents of Vancouver's Lower East Side. This is a man of enormous compassion and humanity, who is no stranger to suffering. He was a small child in Nazi-occupied Budapest, moving with his family to Vancouver during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. He approaches his patients with humanity, and an understanding of addictions, including the many less visible addictions rampant in our society.
It occurred to me that there is a color attached to addictions.
*** *** ***
