Florida Homeless Now Jailed And May Die Poem by James McLain

they shuffle them in,
quiet and cold, like bodies
stacked in a morgue, breathing
in the scent of rot, sweat, piss,
dreams beaten down to dust.

this is where they house
the lost and the broken,
the ones who drank too much,
who listened too little,
who were loved even less.

no place left but these walls,
and four bunk beds rusted thin,
men muttering to ghosts
no one else can see.

one falls, another seizes,
and the third—she dies.
inside, it's just a shrug.
another takes his place
and to may die.