The Homeless Man Poem by Christopher R. Kennedy

I see him stand in streetlight rays.
He shivers from the dark.
Every night he shakes hands
With the incoming night.
The grinning moon brings him his nightmares,
Colorful dreams that scream and dance around him.

A pepper and salt beard sprouts from his creased face,
Dirtied by crumbs of bitter memories
Moonlight eyes peek from his denim hood.
They whisper things in ancient languages
That creep into my thoughts.

His hands are florescent skeletons
And his body a pile of wrinkly firewood.
He’s crumpled against the gray, skyscraper world,
Life playing like a film in his bright eyes.

Sometimes he laughs,
His hallowed cheek and jutting chin thrown into the sky.
His head rolls around on his shoulders and he barks and grins.
But there’s nothing to laugh at.
He laughs hard enough to summon yellow tears
But all I see is a man smiling
At a different world.

And sometimes he cries,
He shrieks and struggles
Against demons you can only see with special glasses.
He pleads for his own life,
Which he can’t even see.

He doesn’t notice the eyes that flit
From behind the car windows rolling by,
Gray faces carved from stone
That stare off at the horizon.

And he laughs.