Hanging from a Bridge

It should've been a good day.
Good enough to make my feet sway.
I still found a way, like a midge,
To see a man hanging from a bridge.
In search of a church, I left my berth.
My stature smirched and mind disturbed.
Driving on a broken road in a stolen Ford,
With a swollen load on my molten soul,
To say amen every now and then
And find my way to heaven.

Halfway into the journey, my ride gave up.
"My belly is burning", she made up.
She kicked, jerked and spurted to a stop,
While I clicked, worked and blurted a sob.
Wearing Benetton outside a Sheraton,
My menacing eye looking for a Samaritan,
I stopped an old man in a three-wheeled cab
And offered to gab if he downed his meter tab.
Voila! He went blah blah in his rickshaw.
With my clenched jaw, I heard all of his flaws.

Riding every explosion under me, controlling every emotion in me,
The rickshaw motioned towards a commotion on the way, slowly.
“Come, let’s check this out”, said my main man, the chauffeur.
Surrounded by curious loafers, I became alert and walked over,
To a bridge. A green stream with silver bream flowed under it.
My accomplice pulled me towards the edge
To show an old man hanging to his death.
A sketch of the wretch is etched in my head.
More haunting was the crowd gathered.
Mocking, watching and yawning; not bothered.


The neck was bent in an awkward angle,
Tangled in a rope, hanging with no hope.
Like a puffed up stuffed doll with cuffed head.
Before I knew it, I was back in my taxi,
dizzy, but ready to resume my journey.
“He looked old, like me. Neglected by this society.
What would happen to me?”, my cabby asked rhetorically.
I was muted by the reality of the event surreal,
Amazed by the world full of stories unreal, we’ll never feel,
anything, if we can’t taste it in our own meal.



I don’t know his name or if he was sane,
what was his shame, or who was to blame.
I didn’t see the hole that made him sink,
That made him think of crossing the brink.
There was nobody I could see, that cried for him.
No family to carry his body or sing a grim hymn.
I wish I knew him better; his story,
His life, his testimony, his strife.
I don’t know his pain or the loss he incurred,
All I can do is keep him alive in my words.