Poetry: Dispossessed and Discolored

7am standing on the corner of Laclede and Spring Ave.

The rain is drizzling the black canopy above

Under the Humphrey’s sign, dull and lifeless without power

Just like the bar inside swallowed in darkness

Half awake it feels like a dream and I worry whether I should be here or need to go home.

Just about the time, I think I’m the only one crazy enough to be up this early on a Saturday-

The Laclede Coffee Company isn’t even open yet!-

A man walks around the corner carrying two trash bags and a barely useable umbrella.

He just looks at me and smiles as he says “Morning” walking by.

His clothes are all torn and dirty and he is obviously homeless

But the rain doesn’t deter him from “working.”

As I lean against the cream brick building waiting,

I watch him stop further down the street to pick up soda cans and bottles lying in the gutter and on the sidewalk.

Crushing them with his soaking wet shoes and then tossing them into one of his garbage bags,

He walks on down the road even as the rain begins to pound heavily on his tiny umbrella.

I look out across the pavement and it seems that the world only consists of monotone grays.

Color seems to just fade from everything

The grass and trees are no longer green but light gray and sick with sadness.

As I stand there, with no color in my sight, every building closed, and no one with me, I ask myself what is missing…what do I need to do?

There is this emptiness inside carving a larger hole in my heart than ever because that man could be me in the near future.

The world is getting evermore bleak

And with all the chaos going on in my mind, I can only wonder, “When will the sun shine again?”