Spare Change News

Category: Voices from the Streets

  • For Jack Powers: This Should Have Been An Elegy

    Go mad. Commit suicide. There will be nothing left. After you die or go mad. But the calmness of poetry. —from A Poem Without A Single Bird In It by Jack Spicer. My wife, Mary Esther, is a devout Catholic who goes to Mass regularly even though she hates the patriarchy of the church. When…

  • Geoffrey Neil, writer of Dire Means, which deals directly with homelessness, talks with Spare Change News

    Goldfinger: I was homeless and upon reading the section of Dire Means where Mark Denny was being treated as if he was homeless, it really brought me back to how I felt in regards to the way people treated me. How were you able to do this so accurately? What experiences in your life helped…

  • "Dire Means" A Book Review by Marc Goldfinger

    “We will never have peace in the world until men everywhere recognize that ends are not cut off from means, because the means represent the ideal in the making, and the end in process, and ultimately you can’t reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the…

  • Tales of the Inner City: The Virus (Part 3)

    Marc D. Goldfinger Spare Change News Taken from The Diaries of the Damned—written before the Tales of Communion——Insect-O-War. Finally it was time to leave the bar. As Dean and Peddlar hit the streets Sky continued to hypnotize his followers, slipping them the odd bag of dope or shot of Jack Daniels as they needed it.…

  • Tales of Inner City: The Virus (Part Two)

    “Clog. You are going to clog your rig.” “Oh.” Dean pulled the needle out of his arm and pressed down on the bulb to spray the old blood into the sink. There was a brief hesitation and then the grimy porcelain sink was covered in red. He ran water through the point. He put the…

  • A Tale of Inner City: The Virus (Part One)

    [Taken from the Diaries of the Damned—written before the Tales of Communion——Insect-O-War.] The day was grey on the interstate to Inner City and Dean sat in the passenger seat fitting a new collar onto the dropper. He stripped the edge of a dollar bill, ran the thin strip of paper through his mouth to wet…

  • Stories: some sad, some really stupid, all interesting…

    1. Lawsuit against Happy Meals. I’d like to introduce you to the true enemy of our children folks, none other than that harbinger of evil, Ronald McDonald. That’s right kiddies, Ronald is evil. According to a study done by the CSPL, children are overweight because of McDonald’s Happy meals. How does the fast food chain…

  • Hooked on Black Tar

    I’m lucky enough to be watching the ocean right now. It’s haunting to realize how connected all the waters are. My wife and I are at Cape Cod, many miles away from the Gulf of Mexico. The waves are coming in as I sit here close to the window of our rented room. The side…

  • Are Peace and Love Dead in San Francisco?

    When San Franciscans head to the polls in November, they will be facing a measure that may redefine the city’s social makeup and alter its identity as a free-loving, interestingly offbeat cultural hub. In a city where homelessness is just as much a part of the landscape as the steep streets and trolley cars, Mayor…

  • The Aliens: Watching Black Poison Spread

    We had to move our space ship to another part of what you call the Gulf of Mexico. It’s hard for us to believe that, for all the technology you have, you humans haven’t stopped the gusher of Black Death. Upon monitoring your television channels, we see very little about the major catastrophe that is…