Our Reflections

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.