Just One Look-Please! Poem by Abdul Samad

You remain seated in the car
While I clean the door from the outside
I stare at you through the window
And you avoid my gaze, turn your back, look the other way

A conflagration of emotions bursts inside me
Rage, despair, misery, gloom, anguish,
Why can't you even look at me once, if only a fleeting look?
Why can't you roll down the window and say hello, just once, just this once?
How can you, so easily and so completely, refuse to acknowledge that I exist?
That in my filthy clothes and jaded cap, I do, after all, posses a heart
Oh by God, I do, I do have one, a beating, throbbing heart

You remain seated in the car
While I clean the door from the outside
You remain ignorant, blissfully oblivious, of my plight
Unaware that I don't have a place to call home
A mother whose embrace can efface all my fears
An education that can allow me to pursue a clerical job
You see me as the skinny dark boy in rags
As the useless, ill mannered street boy
The window rolls finally, a few coins clatter
Money makes the world go round
And you speed away, far far way, to your own world