Our Reflections

Thu, 05/30/2013 - 10:11 -- oddity

Location

78753
United States
30° 23' 20.3532" N, 97° 40' 15.9204" W

A reeking, filthy form rest rotting in the street
Crumpled bones lay askew, smashed against hard pavement
Body twisted and unrecognizable, draped over the curb
Shaky breaths no longer escaped from a mouth full of blood
Cracked skull arched back as if this creature wanted to remember the stars
Light draining from its eyes and slipping into the sky
Trust me though, it’s better this way.

Vermin deserves to die.
It was a parasite.
Sucking support from our society with its gaping chasm of endless need
Attaching onto its nearest victim and taking
And taking
And stealing
Like the nasty, inferior beast it is
A beast that does nothing for no one
Who patrols the sidewalks and road sides up and down
Stalking us.
Ready at any moment to ravage the fruits of our own labor, never doing its own rightful job
Always hungry.
Always needy.
And it wants,
How it wants!
It has the likeness of the ravenous of monsters
And how it is greedy!
And I can almost see images of a drooling orge, delighting wringing its hands in anticipation
Ever so famished

Then we march to our demise, to feed it.
To give it an unearned reward when it is nothing but a soiled, sorry piece of waste
Polluting our world with the depth of its lies and gluttony
It stinks up our world and soon we are choking its fumes
Losing breaths
Losing our decency on humans
PATHETIC.
Oh, how it hides!
You won’t even know it’s a monster.
Such a seemingly weak, sad little devil, asking a simple enough request:
“Have any spare change?”
No, not for garbage like you withering away on the streets and staining it with the stench of your existence
I hate you.
I hate everything about you.
And don’t try to tell me your lies.
We don’t want to hear about your life.

We don’t want to know.
How you cried helpless and alone as a baby, requiring nothing more than the kind, warmth of a mother too busy feeding her emptiness with the intimacy of nameless faces
Or how as a child you sobbed for a father that only existed in the lighted eyes of others
Or how the other children gathered around, a pack of angry animals just as beaten down as you, chanting songs about everything that was wrong with someone so ugly so stupid, so dumb, that limped and didn’t speak because Mommy left bruises on your body that cut you deeper than any knife ever would, with each snap of the belt that shattered the silence of grief that painted your world gray
Or how much ir hurt and God did it hurt, when a man betrayed the tentative trust you formed through an eager bond, because you were so amazed one person could be so kind, but he forced you against the floor one day, robbing you of the last virtue you had left in those long years before your turned thirteen
And by that time it didn’t matter anyway, because life became a game you played by stealing and fighting indiscriminately for a burning addiction that number the memories and let you kill imaginary enemies as it seized your entire existence and melted your agony away into nothingness so your wounds didn’t matter anymore.
Life didn’t matter anymore so you stood upon a stool and tried to take the plunge with a rope around your neck
Then the rope snapped and you tried again with a concoction of drugs and alcohol
Still you lived
And still I don’t care.
I don’t care how you sold any purity left inside you for a fee lower than a bus toll at some point
Or how the weight of life broke you back, how they broke your heart, yet the world was the one to take your soul
Or how you stopped caring
People don’t want to know you’re just like them
And they’re just like you

So no one will care when that car takes a sharp turn around the corner
And the driver is more than a little drunk
Then when that car swings around, speeding faster than a train
It sends you flying into the air
And you land back down again
When your body is broken
And your blood seeps onto the streets
And you tilt your head back and the sky is fuzzy, fading
In and out between blackness
When you know you’re dying
No one will call for help
No one will call at all
Because you’re just some bum.

Comments

oddity

I wrote this poem about the judgement of the homeless in our comunities and people's apathy towards these individauls often regarding them as less human, but they are people too. And ignoring them is just another form of discrimination. I'm not sayin you should just hand out money, but these people deserve the same respect as others. You don't know their stories. They are more like us than we often know. That's apart of the beauty of humanity. No matter how different we all are we are really the same. We're humans and our life has meaning and the homeless shouldn't be looked down upon no matter their life choices. I believe in faith and forgiveness and second chances.

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