Walk On By / Body Bags

Walk On By

I am just two 

Of thousands of feet passing

This kneeling woman

Who makes her concrete-cold Sunday prayers

Surrounded by Saturday night’s snow-slushed rubbish

She rises with a gold toothed smile when I lay my gold coin

On her plastic bag cluttered with empty pill packets 

And touch her scarved head 

No food she says, 

Holding up five gloved fingers 

Get warm I say,

You have enough for a warm drink

But we don’t speak the same language her and I

We just smile the same human smile 

As she returns to her begging 

And I to the bus stop 

Feeling the click of my saddened heels

Fall back amongst the thousands of others

That walk on by

21st March 2018

Body bags

There are bodies

Littering the streets

Bodies in bags

Not dead, just sleeping

Amongst coke cans, 

Half full coffee cups

Dog shit and dirt

There are bodies

For whom Home was not,

Is not and will not be

A place of shelter -

Bodies that sleep

In subterfuge corners,

Shopfronts and alleyways

There are bodies

We call homeless

Beggars, tramps

Whose cardboard slogans

Bleed silent questions

Met by the reply of

Falling footsteps.

21st May 2018