by Joe Clifford<\/p>\n
\nAcross the water from Oakland\u2019s burning hills,
\nbehind granite slabs of freeway masonry
\nand the filth of bottle return machines,
\nthe promise of barley fish water,
\npotatoes and tea attracts a noonday crowd
\nof the ham-hocked and converted. Faith
\nis encouraged here, not for its merits of hope
\nbut for its effective time management skills.
\nCharity at Saint Martin de Porres comes in two flavors:
\nfar-fetched and just out of reach.
\nAnd these wretched and rootless are nothing
\nif not open to suggestions.
\n
\nInside shiny cars, the ordinary people wince
\nwith the morning traffic report,
\nsizing up the headache it is going to take
\nto get to work this day.
\nThe ragged men and women
\nwho line up at de Porres for the free meal
\nare told their meekness will yield heavenly dividends
\nin the not too distant future;
\nand this promise, along with the free meals,
\nkeeps them coming back for more.
\n
\nInside the soup kitchen, the preacher men make
\ntheir sales pitch, and this is no occasion to lament
\nabout the lack of seasoned greens. Holding out
\nfor the perfect meal here gets abandoned
\nin favor of the food they can actually see,
\ncan actually take in and digest.
\nSo what these wretched are left with
\nis hardly elegant, just a watered-down interpretation
\nof what this life could mean,
\nwhich is about as useful as a coal miner\u2019s black lungs
\nserving as a warning sign for spending
\nless time underground.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Joe Clifford Across the water from Oakland\u2019s burning hills, behind granite slabs of freeway masonry and the filth of bottle return machines, the promise of barley fish water, potatoes and tea attracts a noonday crowd of the ham-hocked and converted. Faith<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[794,77],"tags":[1155,1123,810],"class_list":["post-7844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-egophobia-33","category-english","tag-egophobia-33","tag-english","tag-joe-clifford"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DakB-22w","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7844"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7845,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7844\/revisions\/7845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}