Homeless Stranger

Homelessness remains one of the most urgent and heartbreaking social issues in our modern society.  Society has to  recognise the pain, loneliness and hardship experienced by homelessness and remind ourselves that behind every single person there is a human story.  Some suffer loss, hardship, addiction, trauma and abandonment. Society needs to protect the vulnerable and provide support and protection so no-one becomes invisible.  My poem captures the painful reality of one forgotten man whose life has been worn down.  The reasons we will never know.  Yet he captured my heart and was the inspiration for my poem.

HOMELESS STRANGER

I see him, hunched in a doorway, 

Squatting, almost foetal.

Overcoat ragged, drenched from the morning rain.

His eyes sunken, his face chapped and cracked.

A weather beaten mask, moulded by the elements.

A bottle in hand, fuels a wide berthed smile,

Unveiling to me, an old man.

Happy in his own drunken domain.

Abysmal memories, snuffed out and substituted.

My heart weeps to see such a man.

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