The Discarded Man
Made of dust and tears
Walks like a ghost
Amongst those still real
Unseen, unheard
An afterthought
On the periphery
Of nothing
Discarded Man
In his discarded clothes
Eating discarded loaves
Sleeps in disregarded corners
Where the real people never go
Fading into the background
Like portraits of relatives never known
The Discarded Man was not always
Alone
in the shadows
Cast aside like old shoes
At a yard sale
When men needed killing
For god and country
His name was known
When money needed collecting
For god and country
His name was known
But when the toll on his soul
Pulled him to his knees
And He no longer served a need
Got dropped
Like he’d never been
A bottle of pills
A bottle of gin
There’s no forgetting
That you’ve been forgotten
By everyone you’ve ever seen
That your humanity
Doesn’t fit on a spread sheet
Therefore it does not count
In society’s reckoning
Now The Discarded Man
Wanders about
Cardboard shelter
Garbage meals
Begging those still real
just to look him in the eye
To remember
That he is alive
He was once human too
Just like me and you
but he slipped past that line at the bottom
Now he is a Shadow of a man
Lost and forgotten
The Discarded Man