This slim volume of poems and other writings is the result of hours upon hours of effort from some people who've seldom been expected to produce anything on paper -- or anything at all.  It is not intended for a coffee table book or a collector's item or a stocking stuffer.  The authors' simple hope is that it will be read.  Poems found in Inside My Head explain something of the process that creates homelessness while illustrating the ordinary and extraordinary courage, despair, hope, and humanity of the many diverse members of the homeless population.  Perhaps surprisingly, there are also significant levels of joy and, yes, humor within these pages.

Brief biographies of the poets -- poignant, sometimes startling -- accompany the text.

Excerpts follow:

From "Lost in the Crowd": Try a new path,/A new direction./Journey out./Take a chance./ Change the color of the light at the end of the tunnel.

From "Smoking Like a Fish": Things you experience, see, and live/Don't always make sense, no matter how hard you wish./Do the best with what is...

From "Memories of the Heart": For the scent of the flower will hover around it still./And memories of the heart, of love, like the vase.../May yet be filled.

From "Inside My Head": And inside my head there still beats hope/And a spirit God has placed there, with which I can cope/With what's/Inside my head.

About the Coalition: 

The Coalition on Services to the Homeless is a non-profit organization founded in 1989 to address the needs of the homeless population of Fayetteville/Cumberland County, North Carolina.  With the dedication of its member agencies, the Coalition serves one thousand current clients at its Homeless Coalition Day Center and at the Hope Center of Cumberland County, a shelter for homeless men.