Trash

This is Billy Bob and the Consortium
Let’s Have a Conversation Today

Trash! Trash! We are Nothing but Trash!
Real Trash is Bagged Up with More Respect

Okay folks, sadly you get me to start your coffee morning, I hope it is strong enough. When you folks have homes, apartments, condos and town homes, your trash is handled with such care. No racoons, mice, roaches, none of that is allowed. Color coded and marked so it is picked up and hauled away so no one has to know it is from your house. But we are out here, all we are and have is considered trash. Let’s see the question for the day.

Let me say this in a clearer, more conversational way.

I hear how tired you are—tired of hurting, tired of being hungry, tired of being treated like you don’t exist. When the world organizes endless systems to deal with trash but leaves people to rot, it feels cruel and backwards. Anyone living inside that reality would feel worn down and angry and invisible.

You are not trash. Being ignored or discarded by systems does not mean your life has less value. It means the system is broken—not you.

When you say there are days you wish the trash truck would take you so the pain would stop, that tells me how heavy this has gotten. I’m really glad you said it out loud. You shouldn’t have to carry that alone. I’m here with you—and I also want you to be safe.

What hurts the most is that people are often given dignity only after they die. That’s wrong. Dignity is supposed to be for the living. And you deserve it now—food, rest, care, and to be seen as a human being.

You matter. Your pain is real. And you’re not invisible here. If you want, we can just keep talking—no fixing, no lecturing—just one breath and one step at a time.

Initial Reaction from the Consortium

I think I am going to withdraw from this here group in the morning, these knuckleheads are just asking questions to get us mad and upset and then don’t solve no problems.

I know, each one is getting meaner and meaner, and I don’t like when stuff I have chosen to hide from gets stirred up for no good reason.

 They all know we are nothing but trash, that is our stuff is destroyed and thrown away and removed from us and we cannot rest or stop anywhere.

 Easy, eat treats and breath, this is good for us, educate them folks.]

Round Table Discussion/Frustration

Johnny Boy here, and I am going to be real short and to the point with y’all. You folks cannot stand seeing us on the streets, under bridges, at stop lights or in parking lots, it is too painful and too scary. You have chosen to see us failures and trash because then your guilt and compassion can stay asleep and you will not feel the need to give us water when the temperature is 95 with 90% humidity. But if a stray kitten wanders across your path, they go home with you! Go figure, I am done.

Mike here, I have seen the good, the not so good and the really mean out here, and yes, the general truth is this, y’all see us as failures and trash. Why else would you hide your kids when you pass us or call the police when we are doing nothing but sitting, or throw stuff at us, or demand that we move when we are so tired we can barely stand. You are part of the housed community and currently the economy is not stable, safe or affordable and you are afraid of ending up out here, and most are two checks away from this terrible outcome, but instead of kindness, you are cruel.

Billy Bob, okay, my time at bat, I am upset they are, but I will try and speak so that you can learn. Your house trash is marked, tied, bagged, labeled, removed, carried away, it is waste and unusable for anything, correct? So, by the way you both treat and react to us out here you are purposefully equating us with your trash and saying that there are usable properties left in us anymore, right? You have been taught to operate in fear and to automatically assume that we are useless, dangerous, bums, addicts, alcoholics, and good for nothings, that is why the trash label is easy for you.

Sally here, I kind of like the trash that you leave behind, you are a wasteful bunch of people, that hamburger, that pizza in the box, the chicken wings, steak and fries and the like, you waste it and we feast on it. I do see myself as trash, but you increase the trash we have to deal in this nation, so we actually benefit from your wastefulness. We just clean it up a little bit and munch away and we don’t have to go hungry that night, thanks. However as you referring to us as trash, it is your well trained knee jerk response to what you fear and do not understand and have been trained to not desire to help, so you bad, you deal with it.

Riposte

You call us trash,
yet you are the ones who waste.
You throw away food, comfort, excess—
and when you do, we feast.
Your trash becomes our gain.

That is what you fear.

Not us—but what your waste reveals.
So you name us trash,
build barriers of words and laws,
hoping distance will erase the truth:

That the system feeds on excess,
and survives by pretending
the people who live off what it discards
are the problem.

House trash is bagged,
labeled, sorted—
ragged maybe,
but counted.

Us out here—
ignored, kicked, hurt, harmed,
considered less than trash,
disposable,
handled without compassion.

Trash gets rules, schedules, protections.
We get silence, boots, and blame.
That’s the measure—
not of our worth,
but of what the system has become.

I hear how heavy that feels. What you’re describing isn’t a wish to die so much as a wish for the pain, the erasure, and the constant message of being unwanted to stop. Being treated like you’re disposable can grind a person down until disappearing sounds like relief. That reaction makes sense in the face of that kind of harm—but it does not mean your life is disposable or that the world would be better without you.

What’s broken is not you. It’s a system and a culture that protect property more carefully than people and then pretend the people harmed by it are the problem. Your existence is not trash, and your absence would not be a solution—it would be another loss the world refuses to count.

I want to say this clearly and steadily: you matter, and your life has value right now, exactly as you are. You deserve safety, dignity, food, rest, and to be seen as human.

If the weight of these thoughts feels like it’s pushing you toward harm, support is available right now. In the U.S., you can call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline any time, day or night. They will listen without judgment. If you’re outside the U.S., local crisis lines are available through emergency services or international directories. Reaching out is not weakness—it’s choosing to stay.

I’m here with you in this moment, and I’m holding the truth with you: you are not meant to disappear. You are meant to be protected, helped, and heard.

Okay, Our Turn, We Ask You Some Questions:

Our Hope that you will see through the superficial topic of discussion, seeing us as merely trash says more about you than us, which trap us to the streets and to the graves

That you begin to understand the danger of: Not thinking for your own self, but where you can challenge groupthink

See the great divide presented today in this discussion, when you think of trash, your nose wrinkles, your hands withdraw, and you try and get another to deal with it. But it is humans that have be reduced to trash

Finally, assess for yourself, is this a true, true mindset that I have allowed or is it something that I have been fed, and it is false, critically important

Conclusion

TRASH: Totally Ruined Assumptions Sullying Humanity

Trash and compost in your world has its given and varied place, and rules and is handled with care and by many rules, but us humans ain’t that blessed.

The housed and employed and comfortable world has made the rules and that means we have been kicked to the curb just like the trash and yet we have less hope that a pile of well-tended compost.

Then on the roughest day out here our tongue slips and we say stuff that leans into the trash thinking that we can’t allow to happen, we think about trash trucks and piles of trash and how easy it would for you if we just disappeared into them.

What Will Their Outcome Be?

You Have a Part to Play…