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Unnoticed and Unknown
Unnoticed and unknown, she passes through
The homeless strewn along the downtown street.
Unnoticed and unknown by people who
Drive past in cars where high-end Niked feet
Press Prius-powered pedals towards the floor
As fingertips—spa-manicured—repeat
The beat of music streaming from each door
With tap-tap-tap on steering wheels that guide
The gentrified electrified through war-
Zoned camps where fentanyl and suicide
Are synonyms. As like a living dead,
Unnoticed and unknown, she stops beside
A makeshift splintered plywood, lean-to shed
And crawls inside and falls deep into sleep
Upon a vomit-soiled, foam mattress bed.
And there she dreams of promises to keep
And promises unkept, a fallen life
Where what was sown is what she now must reap.
She dreams of home, her husband and the wife
She tried to be; dreams turned to might-have-beens
With wrist-scars from a dull-blade kitchen knife.
A win-win, lose-lose life without the wins
Where oxycodone helped to ease the pain
And guilt from thoughts she then considered sins.
And now she lies where Jesus once had lain:
A sidewalk tomb for broken flesh and bone
Where she, who is self-crucified, self-slain,
Unnoticed, unforgiven and unknown,
Draws final breath with no one there to know;
_Unknown, unnoticed, and alone.
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The Coroner’s Lament
In Honor of and in Tribute to Ron Hylton
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The room was dark, save for a single lamp
Whose barren bulb scribed shadows on the wall.
The unswept floor was cluttered, cold, and damp;
The body lay there, curled in a ball.
Emaciated corpse of bones and skin
With needle tracks on each bare, lifeless arm.
It fell to me to call the next of kin
And thank the one who sounded the alarm.
“Is this Mark Robertson?” The voice said, “Yes.”
“Your father, Martin, passed away last night.”
“How did he die?” he asked. “No, let me guess:
O.D.’d on heroin, or something, right?
Then go to hell! Good riddance! and Goodbye!
Unless . . .” he paused, “. . . he left something behind?”
When I said, “No,” I heard a far-off sigh.
“In that case . . . I don’t care. I’m not inclined
To claim his body or to mourn his death.
Just dig a hole and throw him in,” he said.
“Now let me be; don’t make me waste my breath.”
The phone, like Martin Robertson, went dead.
Such tragic situations break my heart:
The sadness of the senseless death itself;
The family estranged and torn apart;
The urns of unclaimed ashes on my shelf.
For who will weep for the forsaken dead;
Or shed a tear in heart-felt sympathy;
Or leave a farewell kiss upon their head;
When no one’s left to grieve or mourn, but me?
May God have mercy on each broken soul.
With love and life and peace may each be blessed.
By grace restored, renewed, reborn, made whole;
Embraced by joy and sweet eternal rest.
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Lesson Learned
The man appeared to be as good as dead,
At least that’s what it seemed to me.
I nudged his body with my foot and said,
“So sad. Another homeless tragedy.”
To my surprise he stirred, sat up and groaned.
With stiff necked pain he looked me in the eye.
“It isn’t what you think. I’m neither stoned
Nor drunk. I’m epileptic. As for why
I’m lying on this sidewalk, I suppose
I must have had a grand mal seizure and
Passed out. Why I’m alive, God only knows.
Please, if you would, kind sir, lend me your hand.
I’m late for work. I must be on my way.”
With that, he stood, and staggered down the street.
So, here’s the lesson that I learned today.
Be slow to judge a stranger when you meet.
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James A. Tweedie is a retired pastor living in Long Beach, Washington. He has written and published six novels, one collection of short stories, and four collections of poetry including Sidekicks, Mostly Sonnets, and Laughing Matters, all with Dunecrest Press. His poems have been published nationally and internationally in both print and online media. He was honored with being chosen as the winner of the 2021 SCP International Poetry Competition.
Ha ha ha!!! I knew a great pupil would emerge eventually following the Terza Rima lead I have been supplying for years! And of the three poems, the first one – the terza – is the most compelling as the stanzas interlace, interlock and the meaning ‘grips’ you; and the line where you invoke Frost’s ‘promise to keep’ is brilliant. Haunting last line. Well done, young Paduan!
I very much like the terza rima form. My first attempt five years ago produced “The Magic Lamp of al Jafar.” My winning poem in the Dante Competition, “Satan’s Soliloquy,” was also terza rima (as was apropos for the context of Dante). Glad you liked it.
The terza rima of the first poem is indeed excellently done. The stark, pitiless description of the subject and her circumstances is shattering in its unblinking vision. In the last line, Tweedie’s deliberate omission of two syllables adds a cold finality to the picture.
The second poem deals with the intense familial alienation that is more and more common in our overly-complex society. It might be caused by drug addiction (as seems to be the case here) but in other cases it is due to a total breakdown in inherited social and cultural structures.
The third poem is a kind of comic relief to this trilogy of life on the street — as if the narrator were saying “Things are not always what they might seem to be, if you are used to dealing with addicts and the homeless.”
Your tercets in Unnoticed and Unknown are effectively interwoven with the aba bcb cdc . . . rhyme scheme. The neatly plaited rhymes engender a mesmerizing cadence in the reading at first, which contrasts achingly with the accelerating darkness of the theme. The reader may feel fleeting hope for the destitute woman, beginning in the second half of the poem at the line “she dreams of promises to keep”. This hope can be easily dashed with the nihilistic force of the final line, as the woman dies “unknown, unnoticed, and alone.” Yet two tiny beacons of light in this poem shimmer at her stark and piteous passing. One is that this woman’s final dreams are “of home” and the other, that “now she lies where Jesus once had lain”. By the end of the poem, the comfort of the terza rima cadence converges powerfully with human compassion for another soul we can unconditionally love.
All beautiful and heartbreaking. Reading through the comments, I have also been able to appreciate the technical finesse displayed. But, to me the emotions were all conveyed sharply and vividly conveyed.
Three very raw poems.
I agree that the form of each of these poems is beautifully done. They also convey such a deep compassion for people whom most would describe as undesirable. These moving poems could only have been written by someone with a profoundly pastoral heart.
Thanks for these moving and thought-provoking pieces. Reminders that we don’t know what brings people down in life; it’s so easy to judge.
I sense these poems are your own laments from observations made during your time as a pastor that have left enduring impressions of hopelessness and tragedy. These memories of the drugged and afflicted are sharp, vivid, and eloquently presented searing our own conscience with social dystopia.
Yes, each of these poems are speculatively drawn from personal experience. Coroner’s Lament is dedicated to a friend who serves as a contracted regional sub-coroner for the county where I live.
James, I am wholly grateful for every one of these beautifully written, hard-hitting, eye-opening poems that highlight the pain of existence in a wicked, judgmental world that brushes aside the heartache of the individual soul and instead focuses on the perceived stereotype. Thank you!
“Unnoticed and Unknown” is a crisp sample of poetry lying between Plath and the English Romantics. The imagery is remarkable, as is the abrupt close.
May God have mercy on each broken soul. “Un-noticings” are too common even at early stages where a smile alone might help. You correctly notice not only the persons, James, but the things (especially drugs) and situations that draw them away, and the fact that the “unknown” state may be chosen and therefore extremely difficult to reverse. Able work at taking notice of a fallen world.
“Unnoticed and Unknown” is heart-rending without being maudlin. A terse comment on society, and maybe, to some extent, on what we are like as a species. A compelling read.