Long shadows cast by distant dying sun fall
downhill
People living half
in and half out of
total abandonment
The time Safeway's freezer failed
and all the perishables
ended up in the dumpster
at once
at once
is still spoken of as a historic day
but tonight
with that hard northeast wind biting again
on the streets
nobody would want
a half melted Sara Lee frozen apple pie
Dumpster: photo by efo, 18 January 2014
I've never seen or read anything quite like this; it's very powerful and effective and cuts through. Amazing also the way efo's photographs were taken so recently and yet seem timeless, or rather completely outside of time and therefore permanent. Curtis
ReplyDeleteJoan Osbourne - Pensacola
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0f_v9x3khsQ
Thanks, Curtis.
ReplyDeleteThe work of efo continues to inspire. A very unusual combination of talents -- technical proficiency, a great eye, a terrific dry sense of humour, and above all, a desire to show the truth. That last quality, the honesty, I consider the rarest of all, in our present historical environment.
Sorry Charley, hadn't seen yours.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that must be the bait shop guy.
He said, "If you've come to take the car away
I don't have it anymore
I don't have it anymore"
Those warm waters sound... well, at least warm, anyway.
But we have a variety of special offerings this week.
Mare Island: Vacation Destination
Increasing numbers of people living out of dumpsters here. More and more churches offering food parcels - sometimes you'll find working people in the queues (so much for the drop in unemployment).
ReplyDeleteThe covered over history shows up here.
As a general rule, the more expensive the market, the better protected the dumpsters and trash bins, hereabouts. The biggest moneymakers have the biggest fences around their bins of otherwise perfectly edible discarded goods, thus keeping the goods away from the poor and hungry. Food is simply wasted in the name of The Way Our Society Does Business.
ReplyDeleteBack in the days when I was still able to get round on foot I had the acquaintance of many members of that ragtag community of scavengers who patrol the bins and dumpsters of the night.
One fellow had burrowed into a crevice between a dumpster and a fence, and for some weeks was sleeping rough in that narrow space, until the police rousted him out.
An intelligent and sensitive young black man, a threat to no one.
But he had prior, and went back to the county jail.