The Golden Door Locked

The Golden Door Locked, originally uploaded by AnomalousNYC.

People call this local crazy guy Screaming Jesus. On the fourth of July he was storming around my neighborhood with this huge flag.

He really is crazy, and he yells all the time. He yells about genitals a lot. But he also yells about the social injustice in which he is embroiled. You can see how difficult his life has been in his face. I have heard him talk about Bush and the current state of America with an incisiveness and intelligence that would stop a freight train. People just laugh at him. He reminds me of prophets from the Old Testament, warning of the fall of the kingdom.

This famous poem sits, embalmed, on the Statue of Liberty out in the bay, where no one can get to it:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

From the fantastic photo gallery of street portraiture by Anomalous, Lower East Side - NYC, USA.