What Is Needed

Take up all space
no one else is using it,
and whose to say it’s
not already yours?
From up there you could
see the whole city;
the empty upper
apartments to the crowded
town of tents
that stretched from one
end of the street
down several others.

The cold would thin
out all the squatters
with their old radios
barely finding a signal,
some had grown accustomed
to the static.
A broken fire hydrant
turned the whole street
into an ice rink,
and with nothing else
to do they all just
slid around and hoped
they wouldn’t fall.

There was a daily call
for bread by the cathedral
in the central square.
It was always stale
like the laugh lines
on the late night
comedy shows,
that played for no one
on the screens in empty bars.
Almost a million cars
lined the highways
unable to move
as a result of each other.
While they roared about
the traffic out their windows
they were passed by all the
forgotten on their feet
following the street
to somewhere new
where they could
live like they were all
they ever needed.