Piteous Man

Rich tin’s throaty passions he calls from the corner.  The wicked lament of woe has become his bread basket.  Here he preys on the kind, the weary and the luckless.  He knows that guilt and fear will overcome their revulsion, their anger at his filthy shiftless appearance and he exchanges them both for the nod of goodwill that he and they know to be untrue.  He makes them pay for their privilege to be kind because the Church no longer sells their pardons. 

He waits on cool corners with his designer dog wearing a hero’s clothes that have been discarded to charity years ago.  The hero has forgotten them but their symbols are still in service – active duty if you will.  He is pushy and is shameless.  He makes more than I and pays nothing in.  No tax, no levy on the kindness of strangers.  No tariff on the silvered chips of guilt hitting plop plop into the can. 

He smiles, his teeth yellowed from tobacco that he can afford, ground down from the junk we buy him.  He is this piteous man who lives comfortably in an apartment downtown.  I drown in debt, in loans I cannot pay, working jobs that will have me.  He smiles at me when I glare at him.  He knows everything.