Raised on a diet of bible verses,

beatings and curses -

he grew like a rose from the concrete;

feeding on prose, poems and paintings

on pages

of disheveled dogeared diaries. 

 

His days spent playing ball

in hopeless broken glass

grass-less parks;

filled with litter and rabid dogs 

across foul festering fields

on the stench-ridden outskirts,

the wrong side of the tracks,

set him up for a back-footed existence.

 

Washing dirty dishes;

racking,

stacking and packing piles of plates

for wages paid in copper coins,

unable to foil his life of turmoil. 

A plethora of poorly punctuated

pauper poems,

written in faded ink on train tickets,

unfolded matchboxes

and scraps of old paper advertisements -

offered no food for his thoughts

nor crumbs for the rumbles of hunger. 

Lines stuffed fat with substance

never fed the mouth

that spoke them into existence.

 

Pawning his tattered and torn everything

outside railway stations

to ragged homeless roommates

for bartered paper-plate morsels

rescued from floors and trashcans.

With his empty bag and nothing to sell 

he returns to his cardboard cell,

the darkest corner of his hunger hazed hell.   

 

Blinded by starvation fed desperation,

he grabbed an apple

from a fruit and vegetable

market-stationed wheelbarrow

only to end up thrown into jail,

mixed with murderers and rapists

                there's no climbing out

of this felon-shaped hole

as his downhill life;

till death,

remains in

free-fall.