Old man

I saw an old man sitting on the street the other day, in fact we all saw him, we all see him each day, as we turn away our faces and ignore our keen embarrassment for this human who can’t get his shit together, or can’t find a job, apartment or shower, and just lazes his days on gutter corners and paved beds underneath a mass of humans refusing to shed a tear or throw a gaze his way.

Are we not all human? I ask the spirit of social decay, wandering these roads, alleyways like flayed flesh, whipped off the main body, a thousands lashes until you’re sorry , contorted and cold, behold your punishment for poor choice and folly, society discards you like a grown girl does a dolly, and as the bodies are forgotten and the years go on, this army of displaced souls silently await revolution.

We wrap our hearts in convention and politess, and instead of seeing a mess that we offer to clean, we step over it deftly, carefully we sidle by, turning away our eyes and wondering whats for dinner tonight, and should we or should we not buy that dress, and do we confess that we constructed this cess pit but now cannot stand the stench to be near it. We fear those souls who have grown forgotten, old, though all they are asking is for a chance at tomorrow, sign after sorrowful sign, bent at the knees and body resigned, wondering if anyone will give away a piece of their kindness today.

A courteous scrawl on a scrap of cardboard, like an orchestra’s forgotten chords, all we hear is the distant echo of an empty concert hall and the memory of a mister who used to have it all. A bad call, addictions’ thralls, or the destructive path of life appalled this man who held symphonies in his spinal cord and composed sonatas in his soul, songs that live in in the walls of our historic home, our sight knows they’re there though the melodies died long ago.

Curled into himself, the man’s own body was his shelter from the elements of cognitive dissonance, the everyman turning away from his brother, he covered himself from our judgement, the windstorm of apathy, and hail of cold shouldering and every now and then a bold beg of  some dollars or cents will ensure he can fill his bowl among the souls of other lost men.

Please don’t judge me his cardboard sign whispered, I kissed a prayer to the misty ghosts soliciting hope in the form of opening your purse and charitably taking away some of their burdens, by giving them a way to buy a few more minutes of life today. A bottle clutched in a telltale brown paper bag, the essence of this man’s coping and every swallow loosens the noose of rope around his starving throat. Don’t judge me says the sign, pointing the way to the end of the line of a life given up in the winds of time to unforgiving change, and wouldn’t you do the same, and drink away your wretched pain, if you had no one, and no reason left to keep your mind sane, and wouldn’t you try to welcome dark nights wrapped in a shawl of whisky or of wine and calling out, fighting regrets gone by, the scrawl reading, please don’t judge me tonight.