A Message (lost in transit) from the Homeless for Ronald Reagan President of The United States Poem written by Andrew W. Taylor Saturday, March 1st, 1986

A  Message (lost in transit) from the Homeless for Ronald Reagan President of The United States, Friday Feb 28 1986

[Historical note: See accompanying photo. Secret Service agents surround two unidentified men on Friday Feb 28 1986 after they climbed over the White House fence. They were attempting to deliver a letter about the homeless to President Ronald Reagan at his home in Washington, D.C.

Ottawa Citizen, Saturday, March 1, 1986]

On Friday February 28 1986

In Washington

between the bright sun

and blinding snow

between the White House

and the poor

between the anxiety of hunger

and the ingenuous wild hope for redress

two roughed passionate men

dropped over the elegant spikes of the security fence

all elbows fusty underpants and black fingernails

clutching a letter about the homeless

about the hopeless their silent comrades

addressed to Ronald Reagan President of the United States

These messengers (fallen angels)

Scampering at first and laughing with the beauty of excited children

Then opaquely sinking knee-deep into the softening snow

Snared by its change of phase

But blundering on their oversized old men’s overcoats

Flapping at their throats and strange beards

At their sopping trousers full of snow and piss

At their seraphic talons

Clutching the people’s plea to the President of the United States

Jobless they made a solemn joyful business

Of running the gauntlet of the manicured trees

Of the surveillance cameras

Of the sentry nests

As if there were a certain chance

Of winning their race

Of ennobling their class in the pole-vault

In this despised marathon

This unfunded wastrel rat-race of the day and of the night

Of Monday and of Friday and of this day

And their boy’s eyes caught that Friday sunshine

Like washed store-front windows

And they shouted like fans

And the wind and the glare made them cry

And so when the cruel birds fell out of their nests

A flock of trained falcons

Swooping from their ancient places on the rawhide glove

Of the bourgeois cowboy,

From the gauntlet of the dazed mad actor

They were it seemed blinded and amazed

At the logical blows that fell

At the elegant half-Nelsons

At the armed men’s aerobic prisons

Which captured them frozen in the snow

Their hands outstretched and bodies passionlessly embraced by experts

As if this transitory winter sculpture of the encircled messengers

Were more eloquent than the envelope falling from their hands

Falling into the hungry snow.

Poem written by Andrew W. Taylor

Saturday, March 1^st, 1986