Sad prophet, with that long and dreary face
Dressed in castoff
clothes with those big, old heavy work shoes
Bad hair and a messy
beard, big ears and bloodshot eyes
Sad prophet, with old
hands, too rough for the polite handshake
Not a decent candidate
for any kind of public office
Far too thin and
wrinkled and with no credit score at all!
Sad prophet, crunching
broken glass meditatively underfoot
Past the burned-out
building and the homeless, talking in their sleep
Fearfully sheltering
the flickering flame of the joy he takes in life
Sad prophet, seen
walking the streets and thinking - In the daytime
Not up to snuff for
business meetings or potential campaign donors
Usually ignored by the
dope fiends and the petty thieves
Sad prophet, tracing a
battered bible with a dirty index finger
Covered by the dark
residues from all our blameless passings
Listening to the
dumbed-down children shooting bottles in the weeds
Sad prophet, mumbling
to no one as others blather on their cell phones
Untreated lesions from
so much work in the sun all over his face and arms
Finding incomplete
clues to his mysteries on shredded paper dropped in the alley
Sad prophet, sickening
from the lead in our public drinking water
Standing by the giant
vent inhaling the essence of McDonald’s
Gazing at a yellow
sliver of horizon beyond a gray winter’s pall
Sad prophet, at the
thrift store working diligently for a change of clothes
Listening to different
preachers, he ponders their tax-free treasures
Traveling with another
old dog cast off by someone else for personal reasons
Sad prophet, sets each
BigBox display TV to a different channel
Pulls forth a pair of
broken glasses to read his blood test results
Framed briefly in a
streaky bus window, posing unasked questions
Sad prophet, forsaken
by all his jobs and long education
Sits on a bench for
hours watching the zen apple blossoms open
Frightening to curious
old women and invisible to hurried businessmen
Sad prophet, given a
prescription for a psychoactive drug
Filling plates for the
homeless at some other shelter every week
Got off course so many
years ago and is left with no way back
Sad prophet, sentenced
to appear in snatches as we drift off to guiltless sleep
Passing by a single
mother outside the welfare agency, he smiles
Far shorter on real
faith than on simple money
Sad prophet, cooking
potatoes over cast-off 2x4s
Slipping into the
restroom as you are leaving with the key
What is that he’s
reading in your public library for days and days on end?
Sad prophet, with
coarse pubic-like hair protruding from his ears and nose
His mutely-screamed
testimony casually rebuffed by our apathy and self-absorption
His scruffy presence
always deemed improper in the long voting lines
Sad prophet, pacing by
a rusty dumpster in the cold November rain
Philophisizing with the
winos on broken couches in the street
Dreaming with the crack
whores staring blankly out of shattered windows
Sad prophet, hears the
child wheezing from diesel fume induced asthma
Trembling with
anticipation over a dawn atop an overpass that’s closed
Pedaling a rusty
bicycle with no brakes and broken gears
Sad prophet, mails his
last will in on the back of a factory rebate form
Watching as the men of
God try to prey upon the hopeless and the dying
Splashed by passing
cars and laughed at directly into his horse-like face
Sad prophet, mumbling
nonsense that even he finds simply foolish, given circumstances
Standing in the filthy
runoff stream from another Wal*Mart parking lot
Mutually excluded from
the mainstream but too strong to simply curl up and die
Sad prophet, whose very
appearance is an affront to our unquestioned beliefs
Marginalized and
ignored, photographed in secret, quoted without citation
Barred from pacing
through the malls and asked to leave the shelters
Sad prophet, whose
yellow teeth and wild eyebrows contaminate his message
Striding dirty streets
with such a powerful useless purpose that it makes us laugh
Examined by the judges
and found to be unfit for either prisons or asylums
Sad prophet, a
carpenter in cardboard with the addicts, homeless vets and illegales
Horny, twisted fingers
tapping too rapidly on a public access computer
Absorbed in thick books
that nobody else ever bothers to read anymore
Sad prophet, with dirty
tape on the thick glasses with their broken & scratched up lenses
Wearing the worn out
clothes of various tradesmen with a flashy used blue sport coat
Possessed of opinions
incompatible with those you would suppose from his appearance
Sad prophet, quite
aware he is lost, alone and incorrect in thought and action
Beaten up out of
boredom, robbed just for practice, arrested for simply being human
litter
Denied by parents,
abandoned by siblings and an embarrassment to any offspring
Sad prophet, whose
reflection we might catch upon avoiding a dirty mud puddle
Filling out discarded
customer surveys with beautiful and touching fiction
Validating our middle
class lives for us every day as we pass him by without acknowlegement
Sad prophet, another
piece of the litter that only a newly-arrived stranger might even see
Working on the donation
trucks, carrying away battered furniture from your driveways
Knowing too many
unrelated facts and thinking about them far too often
Sad prophet, face down
in the things he has earned and he deserves
Standing on the bridge,
outlined briefly, again and again by harsh, uncaring headlights
Afraid of what he has
become, but prohibited by our imaginations from ever changing
Sad prophet,
disappearing quickly into sidewalk crowds, without a backward glace
Burdened by a knowledge
of no use to himself or anyone else
Watching the oily
reflections of city lights on all the trash always bobbing in the
river
Sad prophet, not driven
towards a better future or sustained by any rich past
Slowed dramatically by
the weight of our omnipresent rejection
Continually forced to
reaffirm the validity of a lifestyle that we condemn
Sad prophet, whose
existence we demand - That we might always be able to ignore him
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