There once roamed a beggar
With a stark, unsettling gaze
Jutting from bloodshot eyes;
The veins resembled a maze.
His words poignant and potent,
Yet the vain were never amazed.
Though he was eager, his voice was meager.
His courage corroded from attrition and malnutrition.
For years he pleaded with the gaudy passersby
Each one despised him,
And fled before he could even ask them why.
With desperate agony
He tugged on their garments,
Their constant reply:
“Unhand me you varmint!”
Others wouldn’t even lend a word,
Only the breeze from their stride.
Trying to be seen was no different
Than trying to hide.
He stumbled through the crowds day after day.
Wasting away.
Constantly reaching for an embrace,
But he seemed to have the physical hand
Of an invisible man.
Day after day he wasted
Entreating for sustenance.
His corporeal substance emaciated.
A ***.
Glum.
****.
Shunned by a society gone numb.
Even though he never asked for a cent,
Or morsel, or crumb.
No, the only nourishment he ever sought
Was a ration of affinity.
A genuine bond
For a fraction of infinity.
Even a heartfelt conversation
Would fill his gaunt flesh.
Instead he was given a gauntlet to endure,
And die a myth like the legend of Loch Ness.
For years he shed tear after tear,
Till he no longer could.
But his heart still broke;
Torn, collapsing from tear after tear
Till he no longer stood.
Simmering in resignation,
He withered into a slumped lump,
A begrimed bump.
Bowing to the crowds passing in a blur.
He was an infectious disease without a cure.
He fused into the graffiti on the wall.
Till one day he disappeared, knowing it made no difference at all.
Still taunted and haunted by memories of sight and sound,
Now he wanes and decays in a cave...
Where I write this now.