Saint Joe...

Saint Joe and his friends are milling about the outside tables, smoking and passing around their clipboards with their bright yellow legal pads. It's Tuesday in Uptown and that means that this motley crew is preparing for their TV appearances on local cable access.

It's like Steinbeck's Cannery Row, here, with St. Joe and his ragtag bunch. For three minutes, they can get up to the podium and speak at the cable televised City Council meeting, and they take these moments to do their prep work. For Joe, it's all about the trolley cars. For every Tuesday, for the last two decades or more, he's taken up his soapbox for trolleys. Every city, he believes, should have a fleet of nostalgic trolley cars whisking people around town. Young and old love trolley cars...they're American as apple pie and picnics on the Fourth of July.

If it's not trolley cars that he's rallying for, it's to have a statue of Mother Teresa built to bless all of humanity. Every week it's one or the other. For nearly 30 years St. Joe has taken up causes for the little guy, poor tired souls that never catch a break. He's like "Da Mayor" in Spike Lee's, Do the Right Thing. He's always around and everyone knows him. He has his finger on the pulse of everything that goes on in his city. And instead of stoop, he stands or sits in front of his trolley bus...maybe you'll pay him a visit and shake his hand. Here's a poem I wrote for him.

St. Joe and the Statue of Love...

saint joe wants a statue of Mother Teresa

to restore grace

and dignity

to the wretched and the poor

and to the downtrodden

and to the homeless,

and to the sick,

and to the needy,

and to the out-of-luck,

and to the out-of-work,

and to the walking aimless who sleep in the park

waiting for their next charity meal.

saint joe wants to place the statue

on a rolling trailer

behind his paneled van with

placards and signs to give hope to

all his friends living in the streets.

saint joe wants to build his statue of love

out of bronze,

or wood,

or marble,

if someone would only sculpt it for him...

that's all he wants...a statue of Mother Teresa

to drive around town

offering blessings;

not a bad calling for one's life...

to be singularly obsessed with

peace and love.