Barrio Man Poem by Francis Crowley, PhD

‘BARRIO MAN' March 23,2014
(Native American saying: "Without tears there are no rainbows.")
By his slow gait and shuffle he appears to carry his
defeat deep in his bones under his tiedyed,
hooded
sweatshirt. A Christlike
figure in brown sandals, pushing
a heavilyladen
grocery cart, he seems unaware of the
moving crowd carrying him along, as he shuffles. A black,
Rasputin beard hangs from a mudcaked
face. In the wave of
revelers and spring,4th Ave Street Fairgoers
in Tucson's
hippie district, he is a colorful ghost pushing his cart
with a misspelled sign: ‘HOUSLESS, NOT HOMELESS."
He labors to push his metal grocery cart, bouncing
across the newly installed Trolley tracks, linking 4th Ave.
directly with downtown and the Old Congress Hotel where
Frank Dillinger was captured. His cart glints in the hot
afternoon silver haze ; it holds light blue blankets, torn
sheltercardboard,
big bags of karmelcorn, three water
bottles and several discarded pairs of blue jeans on top.
As he approaches, I notice his light green eyes staring
vacantly and his bandaged, swollen left ankle which causes
him to limp along, almost dragging his foot like a suitcase
tied with rope. A brilliant light blue Mexican butterfly
strangely floats above his hood, alighting from time to
time on the cart.