Homeless

Poem

Project Freeman · Homeless - Haley/Coates

There's a house in a street that wasn't there before

It never had a window and it never had a door

It never had a roof and it never had a wall

And now I come to think of it, it wasn't there at allv

There's a room in the house that wasn’t there before

It never had a cupboard that never had a drawer

It never had a carpet cos. it never had a floor

I didn’t think so at the time and now I'm not so sure

There's a bed in the room that wasn’t there before

It never had a mattress that never held the poor

It never had a headboard so it never made a sound

But if you didn’t lay on it, you lay upon the ground

There's a man in the bed that wasn’t there before

He never had a torso, gutted in the war

He never had a brain because he never had a head

And if he'd been alive at all he'd rather have been dead

There's a heart in the man that wasn’t there before

It never had a purpose or knew what it was for

It never had a pulse and it never had a beat

It lay inside the man lay on an inner city street

There's a pain in the heart that wasn’t there before

But it's never had a spokesman or been against the law

It's never been important because it's never had a home

Except inside the homeless left outside alone.

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The Story of Homeless...

The House That Wasnt There (print) by Selkie Quan

As far as I remember this was an idea of Cliff Coates', a kind of 'nonsense' poem, which started off with the mysterious, mythical house that wasn't really there. Once we had the format we traded lines in the pub, zooming into the mysterious house as we went. We always intended to finish it off as a song but never got around to it, so here it is, as was in 1990 CE...

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