Listen to this poem

Street-Hardened Bum

Whether I stay here,
Or whether I go,
No one will notice,
And no one will know.

Lost in this city,
Alone in a crowd,
No one can hear, yet
I’m screaming out loud.

Jostled from both sides,
And pushed from behind,
Though they can see me,
They act like they’re blind.

Drops in a puddle,
Is what I’ve become,
Lost in this city,
The whole of the sum.

Living in squalor,
And treated like scum,
All that is left is
A street-hardened bum.

by David Ronald Bruce Pekrul