He has published with Black Wire, Indiana Voice Journal, Rain/Disaster/Party, Ijagun Poetry Journal and Behhutet.
Eric is also a street photographer in New York City. Featured here are some of his photographs.
To see more of Eric's work: https://www.flickr.com/photos/erichill418/
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| Burned-out Blues |
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| This fellow has been living on the streets in my neighborhood for years... |
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| Bag man stalked by shadows... |
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| Homeless shopping cart...a street view |
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| Looking For Food |
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| Life On The Streets of New York |
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| Sleeping |
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| See The World Through My Eye's |
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| Street Life Pictures and captions provided by Eric Hill.
I am nobody
Yet I have a story to tell, although it is really not much of a story at all. The beginning, for instance is not a beginning of anything in particular – it was as if nothing happened at all. Did you notice it? All of this is because I am nobody. I mean all those ‘somebody’s’ began to be somebody at two years old! Then went on to do great big frigging things and ended rich and famous. That is a real story; it’s exciting – it’s magnificent but my story? What can I say? So I begin this story with an insult: “You must be bored stiff to be reading this dreary tribute to nobody!” But there you go – as for me? Well it's a challenge everyday to live this story to its end, ah but you? Well! You can smile politely and drift toward the door. Anyway it will most likely just fizzle out like an old fart that drives everybody from the room, leaving me a stinking nobody. How long can a story about nobody be? I mean nobody gets sick and dies! So what happens? Nobody is happy or unhappy. Perhaps I am a ghost wandering the neither world, a whiff of what once had presence like a thought someone realized then forgot. Anyway people look at me as if I wasn’t there - that I don’t matter. They say, “Nobody can do anything.” But I will matter - I am here to prove them wrong. I have decided it is time for nobody to start asking questions and taking direct action. I will make myself heard but then who will listen to nobody. I will get nowhere. This is the thing: we look at stray dogs and the homeless or just scraps of paper blowing down the street – they are unwanted and a blight so street-sweepers clean and take the litter to the garbage heap. We have the pound for dogs and cats, and policemen to keep the human garbage off the streets. Yes sometimes I feel like garbage, but then again what would you expect from nobody. Nobody is disposable. So yes I am going to start asking a few fundamental questions like: “How come I am nobody and he is somebody?” It’s the systemic structure of winner take all and the losers must serve the master. We are dispensed with as if we had no names or mothers. They look at me as if I am out of place and sneer, “who are you to ask questions?” I am required to say, “Nobody” And be warned, they send bad moods to disrupt your dreams about being somebody, oh yes they can send them directly to your brains through TV programming or a visit from the ‘Bring Down Committee’. Look around, there are plenty of nobodies out there. You could be one! I mean how many friends do you have on Facebook? OK that was a low blow from one nobody to another; next you will argue that I am a nobody trying to be somebody or really just being negative. Yes! It is the bad moods they have been sending out to all our brains – to us nobodies. So I am left scurrying about, grasping at ways to waste time and become agitated so that I can keep my status as nobody. Like rats and roaches we nobodies crawl together and dwell in filth while somebody has several houses they don’t live in. I mean, “What do you think about all this?” Is it all really just a matter of fairness? Is the system rigged to create dough-headed nobodies to wash our toilets, sweep our floors, haul out the garbage so we can feel like somebody?
~Eric Hill
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