Of all those hired to count the homeless for the 1990 US census, the Census Bureau assigned 10% to San Diego County, California.
Downtown locales are not exempt from sunset.
Lurid pinks descend the window hatches,
purpling plaids of urban towers,
silvering bay and buildings.
Gaslamps glimmer on.
Between the civic lights,
dusk hunts hungry through the cooling plazas.
Stalking evening scatters human prey,
those already vagrant
seeking dens of deeper shadow.
Ambulance howls –
metro coyote,
baying tongue of town –
running from violence to emergency
along the savage borders of civilization,
two Americas scraping at their edges.
Sidewalk citizens in sun all day
rage with changes of the sky,
throbbing in the light, and how it goes.
Their minds spill over like firewater;
their fury spreads up the flamed city canyons,
licking a fright at the margins of dwelling,
counted in the night
against the hope of home.
Horton Park Plaza, 1990