The Raving Poets - Gary Lee

Incident Report

My first stint supervising the overnight shelter

it's my fifth twelve hour shift in a long busy week

We've just had a massive turnover of staff

and the new trainees are still green to the slurred speech of the streets

Just a few more nights left 'til the street drug economy

hits the three day binge boom at the end of the month

but the turf wars between the Asians and the Angels

have already flooded the black market with bad stuff

So the chronics are drinking antiseptic

the pillheads and sniffers are right out of it

the crackheads and coca nuts are stirring up tension

and the junkies are all sick from fixing cut shit

Three and a half hours into the shift

already I had to talk three drunks out of a fight

took a description of a missing person from the police

phoned around and found a safe house for some asshole's battered wife

and in just the past forty minutes we've taken in fifteen loaded street people:

six chronic alcoholics pissed on Listerine

several self-medicating schizophrenics

vibrating the long term side effects of phenothiazines

There's a couple of drunk wannabe Warrior gang members

a crusty old bottle picker with a pickled wet brain

two pillheads drooling in a barbiturate stupor

and a lovely bunch of coca nuts jonesing for cocaine

and now there's a crowd of another dozen people or more

waiting impatiently outside the door

We've got two mats left so I have to decide who gets in

'cause there's not enough room for them all to sleep on the floor

Meanwhile the cops just showed up

with an aging pharmaceutical addict

He's all disoriented and he appears to be hallucinating the past

and I feel the familiar adrenaline rush like a drug now

'cause everything seems to be happening so fast

After the cops leave these five native gangsters drive by

with a young hooker passed out in the back of their car

so the choice of who gets the last mat just got easy

but now there's a dozen angry drunks to turn away at the door

When I tell them the score they start yelling and swearing

drumming on the windows with bottles and fists

They're all regulars though so it's mostly for show

but there's a few who are truly potentially dangerous

The new rookie staff are getting nervous

so I act laid back and relaxed to reassure them

and with the help of some relatively straight street survivors

we manage to cool down the situation

but then just when we're doing the nightly lights out ritual

the overloaded hooker starts having a seizure

She convulses repeatedly for several minutes

she's so doped up on multiple speedballs and sleepers

Meanwhile simultaneously all hell breaks loose

as some drunken pig farmer lost on a binge in the big city

staggers from his mat puking all the way to the bathroom

splattering vomit on a whole crew of cons fresh out of prison

So while I'm trying to monitor the fit-pitching hooker

after calling an ambulance I have to negotiate peace

between three junky bikers and the sick, terrified hick pig farmer

while the rookies mop up the puke and a big puddle of piss

With all the commotion most of the passed out drunks wake up

grumbling and swearing and carrying on

Some French Canadian failed Hell's Angel prospect

starts hollering at the top of his lungs in patois

a toothless old Cree woman fakes a seizure

emulating the prostitute

while a common law couple who just lost all their children

pick up where they left off their domestic dispute

In the meantime the ambulance siren wakes up the rest of them

so now I've got a room full of wide awake street pros and cons

The drunken cowboys are ornery and the natives are restless

and the junkies are cranky from all the drugs they're not on

In all the excitement someone's stolen my pouch of tobacco

and as EMS checks the prostitute's vital signs

someone else steals a paramedic's purse from the ambulance

It's time to lay down the law on the line

My only option is to read them the riot act

but I say it real friendly in drug culture slang

"No more cowboys and Indians kids, it's bedtime," I tell them

"and we've got no use here for any wannabe gangs."

Most of them make a joke of it and return to their mats

In their strange street wise ways they really value this place

The deal is...they don't give us too hard a time

and we treat them like humans

and don't get on their case

After the ambulance leaves finally things settle down

and the deep sound of snoring fills the room

My main concern now is the old pillhead the cops brought in

He's wide awake, hallucinating and wandering around

He thinks he's on a job he lost decades ago

and now he's tiling the bathroom with invisible tiles

I tell one of the rookies to warm the van up for a trip to the hospital

while I go to the office to pull the guy's file

When everything's under control it's four in the morning

and the full moon in the west is bright

We've got ninety-two drug addicts finally sleeping it off

Now I can catch up on paperwork for the rest of the night