Rhyme and Reason : Poetry Helps Homeless Man Cope With Life on the Streets
Sure, Alvin Wright may be a scattered soul of the streets, but the 41-year-old downtown wanderer says there is something precious that separates him from the ranks of his fellow homeless.
He’s a reader.
Every day, Wright picks up the newspaper to keep tabs on current events. He devours novels. Mysteries are his favorite. Sherlock Holmes. Detective tales.
“Some people live on Skid Row and let their mind lie there as well,” he said. “Well, I may live there, too. But my mind never lived there. Not for one day.”
Alvin Wright is also a writer, a poet laureate of the city’s back alleys and dirty curbsides.
Each day from his perch outside an Aliso Street gas station, Wright recites his poems for passersby. His voice raised, the quarters, dimes and nickels clink into his plastic foam cup. Heck, for a couple of bucks and a few hours notice, he will even pen tailor-made verse.
His work has brought accolades from the downtown professional crowd--judges, lawyers, cops and prosecutors, secretaries and probation officers--who pass Wright’s perch each day. On Thursday, at their invitation, Wright read his poetry in front of an unlikely audience.
On the eighth-floor balcony at the downtown Hall of Administration--before politicians, actors and beautiful-people types who rarely pass his inner-city post--Wright recited his street stanzas at the annual awards luncheon for the County Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem and Personal and Social Responsibility.
And once again, Alvin Wright’s voice rang low and clear.
One poem, titled “What It Is Like Living in the Street,” included the lines: “It is like being in jail but you are not behind a wall. . . . You are in a situation of having no money, and that is all. . . . You are locked in a situation that you did not create yourself. . . . So now you have no choice but to ask for some help.”
When he was done, the crowd applauded. And then Wright flashed a smile that no amount of homelessness could erase.
Thursday’s reading is the latest chapter in the story of a down-and-out man whose art has helped him develop a family of friends and admirers who look beyond the unshaven face, the scruffy clothing and shopping cart full of belongings to hear the message he has to deliver. And to sing his praises.
“This man is different,” said Phil Xanthos, a branch chief of the investigation division of the Internal Revenue Service, Wright’s invited guest for the noontime event. “For someone who has so little, Alvin ends up smiling more times a day than I do. He’s an inspiration, man. That’s a fact.”
Wright’s routine involves repetition, like a line from a good poem.
Each morning for more than a year, Wright has pushed his shopping cart to a Mobil gas station not far from Union Station. For a while he ignored the pounding traffic and read his books. One day, after a woman put a dollar in his cup, he read her a poem.
Once Wright started writing, he could not stop.
Before long, the wiry Wright became a serious-minded street performer for the workaday crowd, reciting poems with such titles as “Automatically Stupid,” “The Freeway” and “The Woman to the Left of Me,” an ode to his 39-year-old wife, Romelia Rodriguez, whom he met on the streets:
“The woman to the left of me is my wife. . . . And she will be that until the rest of my life. . . . She has a mental problem but I do not care. . . . As long as she needs me I will be there.”
His poetry has struck such a chord with harried urban professionals that many have hung Wright’s work in their offices, presented poems to children at college graduation and read them aloud to friends.
In time, Wright began to call his audience by name. He barked out if they had left their car lights on, commented on a new haircut. He became a pithy street character that professionals looked forward to passing each day.
Eventually, workers in several offices offered to transcribe and photocopy his poems free because they wanted to give him far more than a handout.
“He won’t take your money without giving you something back,” said Raul Gonzales, who works in an immigration bonds office. “I respect the guy.”
But not everyone reveres Wright or his art.
“He bothers my customers,” said Harry Hahn, manager of the gas station where Wright sets up shop. “He’s a bum. I have to call the police on him several times a week.”
Wright has not always been homeless. The Alabama native said he spent a year at Xavier University in the early 1970s before doing a stint in the Army. He has lived in Los Angeles for more than a decade and worked as a gardener until he lost his job two years ago.
Street life has dealt cruel blows to Wright and his wife. A year ago, Rodriguez, who wears duct tape bracelets on her hands and ankles, gave birth to a girl, Flower Gardenia. Officials took the child away when they found traces of drugs in the mother’s blood.
“I’ve seen him have some pretty bad days,” Xanthos said. “But Alvin keeps smiling.”
Last Christmas, Xanthos searched downtown streets to offer his friend some holiday spending cash.
“There he was, rolled out in a doorway, his cart blocking the wind,” he recalled. “And just as though he lived in Beverly Hills, Alvin was smiling. He was reading the paper. I’m sure if he had a pot of coffee to offer, he would have poured me a cup. That’s Alvin.”
His poetry has inspired him to think about moving off the streets, getting an apartment, even buying clubs and taking up golf. “Whatever happens, I know I can write poetry. I can offer people something,” he said.
On Thursday, wearing a blue pin-striped suit given to him by an admirer, Wright read in sure bursts. At one point, he approached Esther Rolle, an actress honored at the event.
“Are you Esther Rolle?” he asked timidly.
“Sometimes,” she said.
“Well, sometimes I’m Alvin Wright. You’ve never heard of me.”
Then the homeless man smiled, as if gaining steam. Or writing a poem inside his head.
“But you will.”
