By POOR Staff

The following is an on-going tribute by Poor News Network. PNN welcomes your words wisdom, and messages which will be published in the weeks to come. Harpo Corleone will also be honored on PNN's radio broadcast (KPFA 94.1fm) Monday, June 26th at 7:30am. Please join friends and family at a memorial service at McAllister and Larkin at 6:00pm, Wednesday, June 14th..

"THE DICHOTOMY OF A DUMPSTER"
(I STATEMENT FOR
POOR MAGAZINE)

Two stories by Trent

A long strange trip.

Blood on the clown suit.

HATE McMUFFIN

KA$H FOR KART$

By HARpO CorleoNE (a.k.a. Trent James Hayward)

(top of article)

My Name is Trent, which is an River in England. I'm The first born, of The first born, of The, of The first born, And Also 1st Fuck-up In my Family.

I was The Great Great Son of The Black Family, with close ties/Marriage To The Grants. Yeah, Ulysses; The Famous Drunken Pres. And The Gov. on The North who Quelched The Civil War. Maybe I'm A Relative of Shirley Temple, But I Don't Know the words to "Good Ship Lollipop". I'm Also Irish (O'Connell): My GRANDDAD on my mother's side (her dad) who chose to live in a cave in Torrey Pines Ca. He CARVED EGYPTIAN MOTIFS AND mythical IMAGES into THE Stones AND LEFT A Guestbook For Fellow TRAVELLERS TO Sign. No one Trashed
his House. NO ONE DEFILED THE SANCTUARY. HE WAS AN ARTIST, AS IS MY MOM.
HE DIED IN 1992 AND IT ALMOST KILLED me. THEY FILLED HIS ART WORK
AND SANCTUARY WITH CONCRETE, DESTROYING A LIFETIME OF WORK. HE WAS OFFICIALLY CALLED ÔTHE HERMIT OF TORRY PASS'.
THAT WAS MY GRANDFATHER... .

(top of page)

Graphic by Diallo McLinn

I remember the way you packed that pack every night: loading a tome from the library--was it Whitman?--after a day of pecking words on our whizbangnew G4 speedsters while you sleep out.

Fucking city without.
Demon wind without
10,000 out
every night out
staying warm with blankets,

booze, needles, and shared stories.

Trent
you told us story: Your grandad in hiz crazy
cave with the carvings how can you be gone?
You can’t be gone.
You are still here inside me
making me look at my demons
that could kill me slowly
or quickly.

+++++++++++++

Trent Hayward aka Harpo Corleone.
Died on the Street: June 3?2?, 2000

Graphic by Jesaka Irwin

I haven't known you for very long, maybe a month. And I ve only met you twice. The first time was at newsroom. I remember being really proud of you for the work you were doing as a freelance writer. I saw you as a peer I guess because of your age and your homelessness. I guess I was feeling admiration really for you coming up out of poverty or struggling to succeed. I saw you as making headway and that made me feel hopeful. The weird thing is that after I met you the second time over at the Coalition On Homelessness, you had just gotten the job at the Guardian. You laughed and said " yeah, I'm their man on the street.... Literally" we both laughed. I 've been thinking about you alot since them, and especially during this last week. That s the really bizarre thing,. I've been watching and waitng, expecting to run into you.. So I ve been doing double takes at guys fitting your description, my age, weather beaten, back pack. Now Tiny tells me your dead. Well that just pisses me off!

It doesn't make much sense though since I hardly knew you. But none the less there it is. I'm really mad that you're not going to be around anymore. Ive been looking forward to getting to know you. The only resolve I have is that maybe you can hear me and know I still wnat to know you. I hope you'll come by and visit us over at POOR from time to time - give us some inspiration. I know that you were respected for your wrtiting and I can surely use all the help I can get. Please consider this a full fledge invitation. I didn't get to know you while you were down here on the earth plane. I hope that your spirit will feel free to infuse my thoughts and writings now that your over on the other side.

(top of article)

Graphic by Scott Clark
Art by Barry McGee

As I am remembering you I am hopeing that your spirt is traveling safely, now and always

Love, Anna Morrow
Poor News Network

(top of page)

To Trent ........From Tiny

#1

It was a small tree in the corner of a piece of partial nature only allowed to be there because it was the landscaped frame for a PGE processing plant ,,proving that poor people like us are not important unless we are sponsored by a corporation....

#2.......

You came to me that night in a yellow plastic bag surrounded by yellow police tape ......

the kind of police tape you would have used to throw at a cop who harassed homeless people -

the kind of cop who would hand out quality of life infractions ,

the kind of quality of life infractions that would get you a warrant ,

the kind of warrant that would land you in court ..the kind of court that you would fight ...

..the kind of fight that would land you in jail ............the kind of jail that would manufacture the yellow

tape that you would BREAK OUT OF ..

.for,,,EVER and ever and ever ..................

Last night on Friday, a man was found dead on San Francisco’s hard streets. I saw him once in a staff meeting; the name he went by was Trent. He was part of Media Alliance and participated in Community Newsroom at POOR. He had addiction problems; I don’t know the drugs used: it’s a non-issue. But Homelessness is ultimately what killed him.

To be homeless, focusing your mind on more than immediate food, shelter, and clothing is difficult enough to many, for some nearly impossible.

Trent did it, turning a so called negative outcome into an asset, an expert on the vagaries of threadbare survival.

Someone or thing cut Trent’s thread... Who, why, when are questions we may never know, but someone does, SOMEONE DOES!

We can all rise, learn, and move on: Trent proved that. I hope he has found a resting place; no longer worried about anything except returning to learn a few more lessons.

By Joseph Bolden, Poor News Network

(top of article)

TO TRENT, FROM Terry

I mourn his loss tremendously. Not only because he was a good, decent, and committed activist, but also because he was the single most exceptional and talented writer I've ever seen come out of the homeless movement. His writing had enormous potential to create social change. He was able to write every kind of story on every subject and make it compelling, vivid, and inspiring.

He wrote about Doug Ferrari. Doug was a great comedian who ended up homeless in the Tenderloin. Trent wrote his life story so that you could feel the ups and downs of Doug's life. You could see the hell he went through with substance abuse and mental disability. You could see the hellhole slum hotels that Doug was forced to live in. Because Trent wrote that story, he single-handedly lifted Doug Ferrari out of the oblivion of poverty and got him onto the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle. Trent was responsible for enlisting Doug Ferrari's friends to give him a helping hand.

Trent also wrote absolutely brilliant investigative journalism. He wrote about the police persecution of homeless people in Sacramento. He wrote about Hospitality House and the financial misconduct of its past officers. He was just truly a great writer with enormous ability to make a change for the better.

That is why his loss is felt so keenly by all of us who care about economic justice. His loss is more than a loss of a friend. It is an incredibly hard loss to the movement as a whole. And it’s very sad and tragic that he was never given the credit in this life for the greatness of his talent. And now the world may forget his great writing ability, unless we, his friends, are a voice for him now to remind people of how special and fine a person and a writer Trent was.

By Terry Messman

Editor, Street Spirit

(top of page)

(top of page)

Harpo Corleone throws a seven

By Chance Martin

( Editor ; " Street Sheet")

I finally wander into the COH offices around half past noon Saturday, June 3rd. People who call me a workaholic are closer to the truth than I'll ever let on: Money jingles in my pocket, and teeming along sidewalks linking all the many liquor stores of the Tenderloin are the typical legions of dealers and hustlers and runners and lookouts and all the whatever elses I don't care to contemplate and am trying to avoid - all of them choking back the despair of poverty and illness for a few moments at a time… sealing their fates in the bargain.

On Saturdays, all that chaos and misery stays out on the sidewalk because the office door is locked, limiting the measure of turmoil and anguish in the office to only that which we permit, or that which we bring with us.

The office seems empty at first but the lights are on, then I run across a couple of volunteers in the back office. One flashes this funny look to the other, and then they get real quiet. Before I can ask what's up, one of them says to me in that bearer-of-bad-news tone "Sit down, bro. There's something I gotta tell ya."

After he successfully insists that I actually sit down I'm racing ahead to the presumption that A) the bad news is he fucked up my workstation and now he's afraid I'm going to go off on him, and B) an entirely inappropriate level of drama is accompanying our little moment together.

"Trent died last night."

I discard premise A, but premise B isn't disproved. I automatically chant the standard response I learned along the years: "OK, Trent's dead. Everybody dies, man. That's just part of life. How did it happen?"

The volunteer reels off a sketchy account gleaned from earlier conversations with la Tiny. Died homeless last night at Larkin and McAllister. Other people who knew him were present. Suspected overdose. When Tiny had arrived at the scene via some freakishly macabre category of coincidence, he was already in the body bag. One of Trent's companions at the scene reportedly charged that the SFPD officers present "let my friend die." Or hasten the process perhaps?

Later, after the volunteer had finished relating events long on reactions and short on details, I realized that the circumstances surrounding Trent's death would come to light soon enough. He had joined the ranks of San Francisco's homeless dead, and we would be studying his premature demise along with the many scores of others. We will then distill all the year's homeless mortality data into a report to be released (perversely enough) between Thanksgiving and Xmas. That, and Trent's name will go on a list which will be read, and later burned, at an evening memorial ceremony in Civic Center on the next Winter Solstice. The list grows longer each year.

Every year my "private list" - the names which conjure memories of familiar faces - grows longer, too. Call it an occupational hazard.

But this wasn't the case for the bearer of the sad tidings. He'd camped out by the beach with Trent and another homeless COH volunteer for a while about a year ago, and it was clear that he hadn't yet grown accustomed to witnessing the savage mechanisms which render loved ones and friends into statistics. I told him it would be harder when he hears Trent's name read in December.

(top of article)

Trent was homeless, and volunteered in our Civil Rights project. He was bright and talented and sarcastic. He was well-schooled in that anarcho-punk DIY attitude of cooperative collaboration. When he was fully engaged in an issue he could compose some of the most original copy we've ever published. Trent didn't need any of my guidance or encouragement to be one of our best writers, he only needed to find refuge from the dehumanizing and alienating milieu of grinding poverty and homelessness on these quality-of-life streets of San Francisco. He just needed to be part of something bigger than himself that accepted him as he was.

His best work was usually captured in one-shot marathon sessions at one of the civil rights project's workstations - transfixed in the separate reality of focused creation. And that's the only place where Trent Hayward (aka Harpo Corleone) ever found respite from a life of shit. The only reward Trent had found on the bottom of society was a passion for justice, and Harpo was justice's champion. And like many other creative, passionate people - homeless or not - his sensitivity would nourish the roots of his demise.

In an impartial analysis, Trent's death isn't very surprising. His appetite for alcohol and drugs was formidable, and he often carried a clear plastic sport bottle brimming with Royal Gate vodka as an accessory to his urban camping kit. Trent's face frequently bore cuts and bruises - souvenirs of the previous evening's impromptu endover to the pavement or tumble down a hillside at the beach. His smartass wit would eventually devolve into loud confused drunken hostility. Bitterness always lay just below the surface, awaiting chemical release.

Darkness courted Trent. He had a "past." Everyone who's ever been homeless has such a story. The dynamic is best expressed as an amalgam of bad luck compounded by bad choices, or vice-versa. A busted relationship, family violence, drugs, disability, prison, death of a loved one: loss and grief and despair. After someone then internalizes the stigma of their state of homelessness - when they come to believe their lives aren't worth much more than the all the "urination and defecation" that flavors so much of what issues from their persecutors' mouths - getting loaded enough to find fleeting unconscious oblivion in whatever park or doorway you find yourself in is about as good as it's ever going to get.

We had occasionally shared a few beers after 5 pm, trying to relieve the sometimes unbelievable frustration that come from trying to educate a public constantly propagandized by television and all those "horse traders" at the Chron. One such night last December, as y2k drew near and the end of the world was in the back of everyone's mind, we were half-drunkenly speculating that if the Christian Messiah were homeless in SF, what would he be doing right now? I told Trent the old joke that Jesus must be in jail, because that's where everyone finds him.

This led us to the not-so-terribly-clever speculation that he would be in a mental ward, but not in SF because mental health care has been the red-haired stepchild of our Dept. of Public Health for decades. Then Trent got real serious and told me that Jesus would be an addict - that's how we crucify people in our capitalist society.

Trent was trying to become his own savior. He was finding a way out through his writing. When he landed the gig at the GUARDIAN I was excited for him. I told him that no matter if it was shitwork, or if his co-workers ever turned their noses up at him, it still represented a quantum leap up from the STREET SHEET - sex ads and all.

He also wrote an article recently that chronicled the downward spiral of a once-promising comic named Doug Ferrari. More recently, an EXAMINER human interest story told us how the (uncredited) article led to a chain of events where one of Ferrari's successful friends found him living in the Tenderloin and was helping him to regain a career in entertainment. I hope Trent's life had more purpose than to only serve as the agent of another's fortune. If Trent had friends with the means that Ferrari's friends had, he might be with us today.

chance martin

(top of page)

Like many writers, some of Trent's best stuff wound up being edited. This was edited out of an article the STREET SHEET ran last summer titled "Hate McMuffin," describing an incident where a McDonald's security guard beat up a homeless customer for demanding the same coffee refill that other, non-homeless customers were enjoying without problems. It describes the widening gulf between the haves and have-nots in SF, and anyone who's ever been shit on 'cause they're homeless knows exactly where Trent was coming from. c.m.

If the cause and circumstances leading up to this violent incident are not readily available to the reader at this point, I would like to offer my humble take on all of this. Brother Nicky is homeless. He is treated as a public menace and a general scourge in this fucked up society, but obviously not menacing enough not to take his money from him. He is however, enough of an "eyesore" that his right to a "free" refill of coffee is denied, so he doesn't "hang around" and offend the high standards of your average fast-food glommer.

(top of article)

I also find it infuriating that the "public" these self -appointed guardians are trying to protect from the sad realities of San Francisco 1999 can occasionally step up and prove themselves human beings capable of being sickened and hurt by the way we treat each other sometimes. But who of them speaks for me? Who speaks for Nicky, and who speaks for that man in the suit you think you are trying not to inconvenience? Fuck you and your flimsy, ragged sense of duty. Fuck you and your twisted self- important idiocy.

And how dare you assume you can speak for me, or anyone else. Better yet; just fuck you.

Harpo Corleone

(top of page)

We had a routine. I'd be five minutes late. A black coffee with two heaping teaspoons of brown sugar and one orange juice would be the order.

Sometimes Jack and Tommy would be with us; sometimes it would just be me and Trent. We'd be at what he once described in an article as "an oasis," the Wild Awakenings coffee shop. We had a lot to cover-- the diatribes of P.J. O'Rourke, old movies (of which he knew so much more about), the latest SF politics, stories about Boston, stories about our families. Inevitably, I'd admit that our talks made me wish I could be more adventurous. He would laugh in a way that I knew he agreed. After one of his comforting hugs, weíd be off to start our days. These mornings filled with the stories that he so easily penned are what I came to cherish. The loving friendship that sprung from them will forever be with me. Thank you, Trent, for sharing yourself and your oasis.

(top of article)

I also find it infuriating that the "public" these self -appointed guardians are trying to protect from the sad realities of San Francisco 1999 can occasionally step up and prove themselves human beings capable of being sickened and hurt by the way we treat each other sometimes. But who of them speaks for me? Who speaks for Nicky, and who speaks for that man in the suit you think you are trying not to inconvenience? Fuck you and your flimsy, ragged sense of duty. Fuck you and your twisted self- important idiocy.

And how dare you assume you can speak for me, or anyone else. Better yet; just fuck you.

Harpo Corleone

(top of page)

To Trent, from from Max

I got to know Trent James Hayward in a journalism course at Media Alliance in San Francisco.

I had the privilege to work with him, the best writer in the group, for a couple of stories. He was always a source of fun and professionalism. He tought me a lot about writing and talked to me about his mother and family living back east.

Trent will always have a place in my heart.

Max Nolan

To Trent, from Scott Clark

PNN Staff writer

Time takes a cigarette
Puts it in your mouth
You pull on a finger,
Then another finger,
Then, cigarette.
The waterwall is calling,
It lingers, then you forget:
Oh, no, no, no;
You’re a Rock and Roll suicide.
You walk past the café,
But you don’t eat
When you’ve lived too long.
Oh, oh, oh, oh;
You’re a rock and roll Suicide.
--David Bowie: Rock and Roll Suicide

(from the album Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars)

(top of page)

To Trent, from Jesaka Irwin

Dedicated to Trent Hayward...
You are...
A screaming memory reborn in a whispering connection.
So much strength
sheltered beneath your travelling eyes.
I have learned the intensity of loss,
and the propensity for madness
re-occurring.
So tonight I light another candle
the smoke from nag champa burns like a blazing fire
and another joins the ancient burial ground in my soul
where the sacred at rest never die.
I may never understand the earths claiming
of street prophets, and works of art.
I will never comprehend...
but I will place all my faith in your next journey...
and hope I see you around in the next life.
Take care sweet Trent

One can never get used to loss, I have learned this over and over again.
It only gets deeper, and harder every time. Sometimes I hope I will get colder... because each passing becomes a mourning for everyone I have lost.

We will all miss you...

Jesaka Irwin

(top of article)

To Trent, from Kaponda

by Kaponda; POOR News Network

I had the honor of meeting Trent Hayward at the community newswroom in the offices of Poor Magazine. I was impressed as he claimed the persona of the Chief Justice of the High Court when issues of poverty were discussed. Trent's presence not only empowered everyone in attendance on that afternoon, but the unpretentious contribution he brought to the newsroom made him an instant friend to me.

We only had one occasion for social interaction, which offered me some of his insightful thoughts. I only wished there could have been more. I will carry his trove in the recesses of my heart.

So long, Trent.

(top of page)

To Trent, from Darrin

To trent from Darrin-

Trent Heyward was one of the most creative people I've ever had the honor of knowing.He possessed a wonderful sense of humor and an exceptionally keen mind. He was a good friend and I'll miss him a lot.
(top of article)

Excerpt from his last email to POOR -

Excerpt from his last email to POOR -

Thursday June 1, 2000

"Yeah its gonna be an opinion column, online for now but we'll see about print they said. They are trying to do more online stuff cuz it is cheaper than paper. I also found out that I got the internship as well, so I am super busy all of a sudden...Im going to work the internship on Mondays and Fridays so Thurs and Tues are open for POOR and ROV. Right now I am scrambled due to the first column, so forgive me if I have been flaking on the newsroom. As soon as my schedule gels into some amorphous semblance of rigidity, I will be more regular.

(I hear bran muffins help also) Peas, Trent

(top of page)

Thoughts on the death of Trent James Hayward aka Harpo_Corleone

He was supposed to start writing a column about the world from his view as a homeless person. I think about that: having a job, writing: but did he have to stay homeless to keep it? What if he got housing with his salary, would the SFBG still find his edgy, sharp writing exciting? Then, what I remember that was so painful for me in my years of homelessness, was how could people with housing work with me politically, claim to believe that homelessness was politically wrong, claim to be my friends, and yet neither offer a time indoors nor help me find housing. Only those with the least shared it. It made me very crazy, and cynical.

Inspiration to keep on living

By A.C. Thompson

In a world where optimism is hard to come by, Trent was the embodiment of hope. A couple weeks back I figured: a guy with such a huge talent, with such sharp intellect will undoubtedly pull himself from the depths of despair. The streets that have devoured so many of my friends won't get this one, I thought.

Trent, I assumed, would use words to skewer the demons that chased him. He'd teach us all a lesson in personal fortitude. He'd be tougher, stronger, more compassionate, smarter for his days on the streets -- a Nietschian hero who once dwelled in the maw of darkness. Like Lee Stringer, the soul-touching New York writer who wrested himself from a decade in the clutches of crack, Trent would tell the world his story, and his words would send shivers through us. Harpo would thaw out some of our frozen dreams, fuel us with inspiration to keep on living.

(top of article)

Knowing him put a wry -- yet earnest -- smile on my face and a warmth in my heart.

But the story is cut mid-sentence -- I now add Trent to the list of friends who killed themselves. (Even if he didn't, on that day, mean to off himself.)

And like all of us, I ask what I could've done, lambaste myself, get Catholic about it.

And I am uglier and angrier, my fingernails digging crescents into my palms.

And I look at my comrades who are still with us and try to appreciate them a little bit more.

(top of page)

We Close Our Eyes, A Poet Dies

by Terry Messman

Trent Hayward died nearly within spitting distance of the gleaming,gold-bedecked dome of San Francisco City Hall. On the evening of Friday,June 2, he laid his head to rest on a ragged patch of earth one too manytimes. He never arose from his final sleep. We close our eyes, a poet dies.It was a lousy place for a great writer to die, a shabby, vacant lot on thecorner of Larkin and McAllister that had become a last-ditch sleepingquarters for those who couldn't pay their way into even the worst slumhotel. Trent Hayward, an outspoken and prophetic writer who tried to rightthe wrongs of this rotten, corrupt system, slept on this street corner formonths, a place where his dreams were invaded by the roar and toxic exhaustof passing traffic, his inner peace assaulted by the mind-bending chaos ofstreet life.

The ultimate mockery is that he died in full view of the golden dome ofCity Hall, where San Francisco officials, in their ice-cold arrogance,invested hundreds of millions of tax dollars to build a decadent replica ofthe opulent Palace of Versailles, presumably so all the unsheltered, unfed,and, in too many instances, unliving bodies of homeless people sprawled onthe unforgiving ground all around could be comforted by thismultimillion-dollar monument to Mayor Willie Brown's ego.

Every night when he bedded down, every morning when he arose, Trent couldsee where the city had blown all its shelter money, its drug detox money,its mental health money - instead of wasting it on the destitute likes of him.On June 13, about 100 of Trent's friends gathered at the street cornerwhere he slept, and dreamed, and died. We held a memorial service organizedby Lisa Gray-Garcia of Poor News Network and Connie Lynch of the GeneralAssistance Advocacy Project. As I offered flowers and a tribute to Trent, Iwanted to say, "Trent still lives in our hearts and is resurrected in ourstruggle for justice."

But those words just wouldn't come out. His death seemed too sad forsolace. All I could offer was a curse to the world of injustice where helived and died: "Fuck you, San Francisco, for spending your money to coverCity Hall in gold while your people live and die in poverty and misery onthe streets all around it."

In my heart, Trent Hayward is absolutely irreplaceable, the finest writerto grow out of the homeless movement. I mourn his loss tremendously. He wasthe most passionate and dedicated writer out of the hundreds who havewritten for Street Spirit in the past five-plus years.

Trent was the one with the guts and the nerve, the one with the spirit andthe sarcasm and the spunk and the style, the one who would not be silenced.The one who could rescue comedian Doug Ferrari from the oblivion of povertyby the sheer humanity of his writing. The one who could use that same pento hurl thunderbolts at the agents of injustice in positions of power. Itis heartbreaking that his voice will be silenced forever.

Andrea Buffa of Media Alliance and Lisa Gray-Garcia (Tiny) called me withthe awful news after Tiny found the cops putting Trent in a body bag on thevacant lot where he died. That night I was shaken at his loss, rememberinghow vital and enthusiastic he had been in the days before his death, askingme constantly for new writing assignments, wanting to take on a whole worldof injustice with his pen.

But as much as it hurt to contemplate his senseless death that first night,the next morning was far worse. I felt such a heavy sense of irreplaceableloss, a feeling I can't get over to this day. I felt then, I feel now, thata part of our hope has been stolen. In Trent's absence, many life-and-deathstories on the mean streets of poverty will never be written - not with asmuch passion and outrage and investigative zeal as he would have mustered. On the morning after his death, it felt like the world was a lesser place,drained of vitality. I have not been able to fathom to this day how to makeit right again. In spite of well-meaning platitudes, life doesn't always goon again, and not all wounds are healed by time.

Neil Young's haunting song of mourning and loss plays in my mind for Trent:

"I've seen the needle and the damage done,

A little part of it in everyone,

But every junkie's like a setting sun."

Trent's sun set gloriously. He was writing furiously for Street Spirit,Street Sheet, and Poor magazine. His powerful moral indictment of themismanagement of Hospitality House came out in the June issue of StreetSpirit the very day he died. On the last day of his life, when Trent wasfading away and becoming permanently voiceless, the fates granted him thisone last chance to be a voice for the voiceless. It felt like an unquietghost was still raising hell in our publication, disturbing the peace ofthe unjust. With Max Nolan, Trent had spent months researching thisinspired piece of muckraking journalism that spoke out for all the homelesspeople and artists who got shafted by the agency.

His first on-line column for the Guardian was reportedly in his backpack,the same backpack his mother Connie Connell wrote about in a farewell prayer:

Trent, oh Trent, my only sonÉ

You left this world with only a

backpack by your sideÉ

And as you laid down upon the ground,

Earth mother hugged you and cried.

(top of article)

At the June 13 tribute to Trent, it was overwhelming to see how manyhomeless friends, activists and media colleagues came to pay tribute to afallen warrior. Connie Lynch read a beautiful, wake-up call of a letterthat Trent's mother had written especially for the service (the full textis reprinted on page five).

Perhaps the most heartfelt tribute was paid by Doug (Dougzilla) Ferrari, agifted comedian who had undergone a harrowing descent from the top of thecomedy world down through the end-of-the-line slum hotels and emergencyshelters of San Francisco.

When their paths crossed fatefully on the tough streets of the Tenderloin,Trent threw Dougzilla a lifeline, disguised as a pen. Writing in StreetSpirit under the pseudonym Harpo Corleone, Trent wrote a vivid account ofFerrari's life story so that you could feel the exhilaration of Dougzilla'scomedy career, and also the anguish of his addiction and mental disability.Trent made you see the hellish plummet into hellhole slum hotels.

Trent's story in the May issue of Street Spirit lifted Doug Ferrari out ofthe silence of poverty and got him onto the front page of the San FranciscoChronicle. Kevin Fagan picked up the story, wrote about Ferrari's plight inthe Chronicle, and enlisted Doug's old circle of comedy friends to come tohis aid.

With his voice full of emotion, Ferrari said at the memorial service thatTrent had saved his life by writing his story. Ferrari had been laid so lowby poverty and disability that he had resigned himself to enduring thelousy, unspeakable conditions in slum hotels, and had resolved to nevertell anyone who he really was, or ask for help. Then Trent stepped in, andeven though he was busy battling his own demons, he found the heart towrite an uplifting story about a world-class comedian struggling to survive.Despite his essential role in rescuing Ferrari, Trent's own rescue nevercame. In one of his last acts on earth, Trent - a bright spirit savagelyeliminated from our midst - may have helped save another spirit from thebrutality of the streets. This is how instant karma repays him?Harpo Marx in the Tenderloin

Trent's pen name was Harpo Corleone, an uneasy alloy of two very differentpeople, Harpo Marx and Don Corleone. Trent was an anarchic spirit, a HarpoMarx stepped down from the movie screens into the hard-edged streets of theTenderloin, there to unleash the Marx Brothers' subversive, surreal attackson the status quo.

Harpo, Trent's hero and namesake, was the most wildly imaginative Marxbrother, a riotous and lawbreaking role model, brazenly stealing everythingthat wasn't nailed down from the pompous stuffed shirts, then outrageouslymocking the police who came to bust him.

Trent was as free-spirited and out of control as his alter ego, Harpo, yethe was simultaneously something tougher: a raw-edged, blunt-spoken fighterfor the rights of the poor. Harpo Marx's musical instrument was the harp;Harpo Corleone's chosen instrument was the harpoon, thrown with greatrelish and piercing accuracy to puncture the bloated egos and moneybags ofthe rich and powerful.

The needle and the damage done

"I know that some of you don't understand

"Milk-blood to keep from running dry."

Trent was facing double jeopardy as a sensitive soul and a destitute streetperson. Blessed and cursed with the hypersensitivity of the artist, Trentwas shoved out of society and onto the streets, there to face everydehumanizing hardship and soul-crushing indignity imaginable.

He turned to alcohol and to an even stronger anesthetic, the "milk-blood"of heroin, to numb out the pain of the streets and to find shelter underthat comforting chemical warmth. It's not just homeless human beings whofall prey to the death-trip of addiction. Countless creative artists,writers, poets and musicians have ended or shortened their lives becausethey turned to alcohol or drugs in stupefying amounts for solace orinspiration or numbness or unconsciousness.

A shield from the pain of life, self-medication with drugs and alcohol isone of the surest ways to be delivered from pain for all time. It's arelatively short journey from numbness to anesthesia to feeling nothing atall ever again.

"I watched the needle take another man,Gone, gone, the damage done." The heavy street drugs are natural born killers. They comfort in the shortterm and destroy in the long run. Once you're addicted and living on thehopeless streets, fighting your way out again is like frantically sloggingout of quicksand. The harder the captive thrashes about trying to escape,the more powerful becomes the deadly pull downward. At the very moment oneseems to be making it to the surface, the quicksand of addiction cansuddenly pull one down into oblivion - all the way to nothing.

Truffaut's film, The 400 Blows, shows how a series of hard knocks finallylands with the cumulative power of a knock-out punch and sends a derelictboy reeling right off the face of the earth - the final frame freezes on ahaunting image of the youth running blindly into the ocean.

So it was with Trent. Enduring the 400 blows of poverty islife-threatening. Many of his friends wondered at the timing of his death,for his life seemed to be on the ascent, his spirits lifting. But thestresses and burdens of poverty, substance abuse and disability aren't laiddown so easily. Just when it seemed an escape hatch from homelessness hadopened up, when Trent's writing career was taking off, one final, fatalblow landed. That's all it took.

That's what we did not see or suspect. Didn't Gandhi warn us that povertyis the worst form of violence? Didn't the 169 homeless men, women andchildren who died on the streets of San Francisco last year teach us thatpoverty is lethal?

Somehow we did not see it coming.

We lower our guard, a friend dies hard. We close our eyes, a poet dies.

(top of page)

THERAPY COSTS TOO MUCH!!!!
Dee Gray, M.S.W., M.F.C.   Licensed Therapist specializing in advocacy and crisis counseling. Mother, daughter and family counseling. Adoption and juvenile dependency. Literary and creative art counseling. Individual and group therapy. Sliding scale fee. (415) 541-5629.