Rough Sleeper Poem by Keith Shorrocks Johnson

Life itself is an unfavourable condition
And God himself is in rags at the doorway.
None can enter - the threshold is barred
Queue if you like, but you won't get in.

The doors are closed, the windows shuttered
Try explaining to the bouncer or the doorman
That you are an artist, a musician, a writer … a poet
It won't work, they have heard it before.

It is not as though there is no heaven
It is more that everything is there on the pavement.
Late in the early hours the old man will sleep
And in his dreams things will open up.