The Passion of the Downtown East Side

Another great poem off of the "No Fixed Address" Album:

"The Passion of the Downtown Eastside" by Bud Obsborn

After the board of directors meeting at the Carnegie Community Center
I walked outside the theatre where the meeting was held
to the balcony overlooking an alley to smoke a cigarette
In the alley I saw a man methodically going through the trash in an overflowing dumpster
and he reminds me of a man I have seen panning for gold in Rock Creek
I see empty syringe packages floating or sunken in dark dirty pools of water
and I see a pink blouse in a heap and drug addicts scurry to fix
and I hear shouts and screams and curses and a siren blaring

And I see a woman wearing a sleeveless white blouse with large purple polkadots
and a short white skirt with blue stripes
She's barefoot and has a multitude of bruises up and down her legs
and black needle marks on the back of her knees
like a swarm of ants fussing on something to eat
and there are needle tracks on her arm and on her jugular vein
and she has open sores and cuts and scratches
and a white gauze bandage around one wrist,
the bandaging of a kind I've known to cover stiched and slashed wrists
for even china white can't quiet the flashbacks ignited
from a childhood of rape and beatings and abandonments
so common down here

And then, this woman grips a shopping cart for balance and dances
her body twists, bends, writhes, crouches and rises
though thrust by a demon into grotesque positions
The man sifts through trash, drug addicts walk past with scarcely a glance
at this woman's performing a drug driven dance
frequently seen in the 100 block of East Hastings street

"The dance of the damned", I say to a friend standing next to me
He grunts in acknowledgement
"Should take them all out to the country," he says, "and make them clean up,
and if they want to leave they'll have to walk a long way"
I didn't tell him about junkies I've known who have walked down here
all the way from Abbotsford after leaving a treatment center.
My friend shakes his head in disgust and departs.

..and she still dances...

in an alley like a cesspool at the bottom of hell.

But then she grasps a slender piece of wood from the shopping cart,
snaps it and dances a few feet to a wooden hydro pole
She lifts the object she made above her head. She stands on one leg
and reaches to place it between the metal sheath around the pole.
And the wood.... it's a cross.... a wooden cross
her action is the culmination of her dance,
she spins away from the pole, bends over as though bowing down
takes three quick. little steps and is gone
sirens... screams... curses... shouts...

She danced the passion, she raised the cross,
here, for me, because I, too, have used drugs to spill my blood in this forsaken alley
In this dirty alley, she made a cross from a useless piece of wood
a piece of wood the builders rejected
She made a cross here for the One who stands most of all with the damned
The One whose cross is the only sense of her life and mine
In this abominable alley she planted the cross
The cross cast out by churches of wealth and success
The cross denied in society by the powers of success and wealth
She placed the truth exactly where it belongs, exactly here,
She made a place for Him, perhaps the only place that is left for Him,
though He would be in every place
And she knows where Christ is, this woman of all people,
is the one chosen to make this known today

Before my friend left he expressed sentiments simliar to those
about the One who died on a cross
"Why don't people clean up this alley?"My friend was only to wait a short time, for powers are aligning to do so
The same powers driving Jesus away, because here is a cross that cancels distinctions
between she who dances in an alley and the daughters of power on Robinson street
who buy thin gold crosses to wear around flawless necks and unmarked skin

But here in this alley the cross is dangerous This cross asks,
"Why have you forsaken me?"
Here in this alley, the cast out Christ asks, "Why have you forsaken me?"
The one cursed by the world, the object of cleanup campaigns the immoral one asks,
God asks,
"Why have you forsaken me?"

It is an astonishment and an amazement this blessing given here
in the most disgusting location in the city
But what words should I then use to describe the stock exchange on Granville street
The stock exchange where there is no cross, no truth, no blessings
The stock exchange which tries with other powers of lies and greed
to drive God, drive Christ, drive her and me from this city
Except here in this alley made holy,
here in this alley, one place at least, made holy.

and you who danced the passion of the downtown eastside
in faithfulness surpassing understanding
May the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you....always