Righteous Riders

Ten thousand eyes will each day pass but not a single one will see, for the folly of their hubris hides from harsh reality, and when they pass by homeless people posted prone in poverty, cold cloaked, they are invisible. Ten thousand ears will each day pass but not a single one will hear any proper prayers of the sullen souls that live their lives in fear. And so they sing their psalms in silence praying angels will appear, their sadness semi-visible. Ten thousand nostrils will each day pass turned up and they’ll all detect the foul fragrance from a stumbling bum with bubble bath neglect. And yet their greatest fears are fostered by his foreign dialect. So sobering, so risible. Five thousand hearts will each day pass but not a single one will feel for the burdens borne by a beggar with war wounds that will not heal. Still they will paint themselves as patriots, American, genteel. One Nation, indivisible. Now forty-nine hundred ninety-nine, by bike, by car or by train, still each day pass oblivious, while the one that they thought insane, is a poet who rode to heaven on his high horse dubbed Disdain, his verses inadmissible. Submitted 3/5/2021 This is a substantive re-write of “Urban Commuter Scents and Sensibility,” posted in August 2020, with new content to create a new dramatic monologue poem for the “Biting Satire Poetry Contest,” sponsored by Edward Ibeh.