FREEDOM & POVERTY By Gilles Chiasson
After many years of first being afflicted with poverty and then working in its domain [food banks, information and resources, advocacy], I am always amazed at the reality regarding rights and welfare.
There seems to be a pervasive notion that welfare is innately punitive, do something wrong and you will be [...]

In empty bottle fields
Laced with shopping cart tracks
Near the viaduct mansions
Live the cardboard hearts
Busy with cigarette butt excursions
And food bank dreams
Whistling inner voices
While talking with the wind
Soiled tarpaulin against the noise
Of iron horses rolling below
Followed by sirens and lights
Creating the silence of the mind
Adrift with fetid mattresses
Of their graceful repose
Copyright © Gilles Chiasson 2010

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“He’ll probably keep spending his nights at the Oxy, coming home mean, talking fist speak, till she ducks out, goes to the Women’s Centre, which will be closed due to funding cuts, so she’ll do some dumpster diving in the donation box outside the Thrift Shop until she finds another quilt and a spot to lie.”

Collateral Christmas Holidays – By Gilles Chiasson Dec 26 2009
I am quite sure it was never meant to be this way
Full of pressure, hostility and addictive abuse
Domestic uproar, spilt over gravy boats and broken toys
Babies crying, children anxious and parents fighting
Most damming of all, the promise, the hope, the expectation
That this day should be happy [...]

I work at a food bank in MTL, and we are looking into getting a campaign off the ground with regards to cutting rates to our bus passes for those on welfare. We already do so for our seniors and our student population, why not for those with the least amount of income? Our monthly [...]

Tweek The Squeegee Kid will be gone soon enough
So those that resent her need only be patient, in time she’ll leave
But for those who wonder how she manages to float without drowning
She will impress us with her damaged dance of sadness and odd hope
A grace so deeply filled with eccentric logic and determination
Obscurely twisted with the fury of her childhood molested
How will she be rescued from this tragic street opera?

His mother would say her son was too sensitive
While she complained about being beaten by his father
Comparing herself to the lady upstairs who
Got smacked around every other day
She must be doing something wrong
His mother would say
Somehow inferring
How lucky he should be to have
Such a good mother,
She must be doing something right
His father would say his [...]

Bastards of Love
Homeless hearts naked against the elements
Of lives abashed and never watched over
With acceptance filled eyes
Nor touched by hands of comfort and joy
Like windless skies or music without soul
A yearning so profound no one can remedy
Unless the devotion is truly a humane act
Of admiring charity
These bastards of love know only
The emptiness of solitary tears
For [...]