City Streets

A man walks down
the street,
his clothes all tattered
and torn,
The smell of urine and
dried up puke
emanate from
his broken body.
His crazed mind
rattles off incoherent
sentences, which stream
out of his mouth.
He twitches and
screams out to people
no one else can see.
The passers by on this
city street
glance disapprovingly
at this old man
with his un-kept hair and beard
and his uncouth odor,
as they also try
to pretend that he
does not exist.
And as he walks the
city streets, his home,
he passes a sight that
he cannot let go
Unspoken.
He stops at a bus stop
and sees a young man,
transient in Nature,
With a laundry basket
filled with clothes,
A tent, a sleeping bag,
and food poking out
from underneath.
The young man sits,
waiting for passage
out of this city.
The elder stares
at the young man
and screams at him,
while the young man sits there,
so calmly, in the other’s
home, filled with
pride
and youth.
The old man keeps yelling as he
walks down the street.
He bends his broken body
down into a trash can
and picks up a cold
cup of coffee.
The old man
holds the cup
in his cold chapped
hand
And screams out
so that all the ears of
The City
can hear
the throbbing pain
that beats within
his scattered mind
and his twisted body.
His anger and
rage wells
up within his soul
like a
great fire
of anguish.
The old man walks
up to the young transient,
who stands impatiently,
waiting to
move on,
out of this town
of broken dreams.
The elder stares,
with hard, cold, piercing
eyes,
Wanting so much to spit
in the face
of pride and youth.
He, ever so calmly,
pours the
cup of Joe
at the young man’s feet.
With a twisted snarl,
and slurred speech,
he mutters out
his own, personal truth.
“We were never motherfucking
created equal,” says he,
and walks on, through the
streets, which are his home.
Trespassers come in many forms.
Sometimes it’s a good idea to take
a walk in another man’s shoes,
no matter how hard it
can be.
What does it mean to truly
understand?
The path to empathy
can be found
on cold city streets.