A Sunken Heart

A couple of twisted shacks composed in Card Board City in Everywhere County the nameless man or woman spits out another tooth with Tuberculous phlegm An eye for an eye no dentures for grinding venture just an evil spell of Garbage soiled clothes or what remains of them beer cans and urine Wrenching stench Few coins because this is No Go Area for anyone but outcasts forgotten Vermin and while the rats from overflowing sewers gnaw happily amongst The debris The coughing cusp the curse of festered purulence progresses to one final Rattle then in the morgue the pathologist puts on a second pair of plastic Gloves in terminal grace It’s cold in there the frozen room however warmer kinder than the cast out Street on which the vagrant’s plight had long forgotten he had been a human Child of God He She it was who chose their own abode who took to drink a lazy bugger Beggar refused (?) to take the pills for the psychosis of Self society and Sacred misery Foul swelling smelling accusations circle the pauper’s grave yard and fathom On the forgotten broken altar of communal denial in compassion only for The chosen And yet did we pick our own genes from a catalogue of plenty did we have Any choice have we ourselves decided on our parents school our place and Placement in the gutter While what remains of this abandoned man or woman is just a pickled liver in A jar a desolate brain and stagnant lung in formalin to teach the meaning of Disease As no one but the fellow stragglers mourn and someone else takes place and Demise on the streets of Everywhere I cannot reach out from my poet’s den and feather pillow Unless I walk the path in my own mind at least do not calm my troubled Conscience decide this injustice is far too important to leave tentative solution To other's 'othering' The scars of wounded side lined residents on the outskirts deep inside Inverted gaze continues to be downplayed as a sad simple blemish while the Sickness resides in me Could be my drink my card board my phlegm exhaled onto my own corroded Silver spoon my abyss my rats and stinking garments my hobo’s sunken eyes And heart 25th March 2018