Cut and Waste

by © Dr. Wendy Browning

Obsessed with cut and paste techniques, my plan this month was to assemble a poem from alternating lines of prose by Henry Miller and James Joyce. Unfortunately, these two guys almost never make sense together. See for yourself:

If the sewer mains were open you held your nose

-Fretted forlorn, dreamily rose.

Round and round one walks seeking the hub

-Best value in Dub.

So instead we'll talk about pro hygiene center signs. It seems that "no hygiene center" signs are appearing at some businesses downtown and we at the Real Change want to encourage everyone to counter with their own hygiene center signs. In order to help people along with this, I have been asked by the management to offer some samples.

Here are some of my first efforts.

Hygiene - An Idea whose time has come!

A clean street person is an invisible street person.

Help give Seattle's homeless the scrubbing they deserve!

Would a bum by any other name
smell the same?
Not with hygiene centers!

At this point I felt something was missing and sought consultation. My good friend Andy was unavailable, recovering from an operation. So I turned to Tim Harris, who advised, "More pith! Make them rhyme!" So pith it is.

A dirty bum is disgusting to see

With hygiene centers they needn't be.

A hygiene center down the block

Means clean shiny bums `round the clock.

Let the homeless have showers, So they'll all smell like flowers!

Say yes to hygiene centers

they're absolutely right

The homeless need soap and water

to make themselves look bright.

It would be so keen

if the homeless were clean

so please don't be mean

support centers of hygiene.

Finally, an artistic contribution:

Hygiene Haiku, or Opus 19,

My Second Haiku with Content

Morning, a clean bum.

All around hygiene centers -

Cherry blossom time.