The Man on Main Street- Free Verse

The Man on Main Street: Free Verse

If you walk down Main Street, and up 15th
To the cafe with the faded sign
Next to the bakers, the one whose son runs the shop
You’ll find there a man, his legs bent
He’ll nod hello, stranger or friend
As he sips on his coffee
And picks at his biscotti
And skims his paper
And wears his skin like paper
With the weight of iron
His arms crossed, his face withered
And in his eyes an ocean
Once I stopped to talk to the man;
he reads his paper
Because he always wanted to write for one
He dreamed of travelling the world,
of not having enough to eat
Nor a home to call his own
and only legends and rumours for food
Of tales of adventure
And bravery
And romance
And passion
Of being so much more
And he sips on his coffee
To remember the ones his mother gave him
When he was just a youth
And to remember the ones he shared
With friends, gone and passed
In a land he no longer knows
Where he used to sit and laugh
At the people who walked by
And the friends who smiled at him and his face
Which was once unwithered
And at the other men who sat at cafes
Like he does now
And the man still picks at his biscotti
Because his sister became a baker

Not the one next to the cafe;

His sister lived in the land
That he no longer knows
She would give him leftovers
Small favors from her shop
And to her, they were nothing
But to him they were the world
They filled him with joy
And gave him scraps of his broken past
Charity for the poorest of men
A prop to stand up the broken frame
That is the poor mans soul
Sometimes the baker-not the sister, shes long gone-
Comes and talks to the man
And wishes him well, honestly
From the bottom of that baker’s heart
Theres a little tiny ray that he tries to give to the man
Because he sees the man every day
And thinks of him more than that
Because he hopes, maybe one day
He will look out his window, and the man will be gone
But the ray doesn’t touch the man
He is too far away in his chair
And so he sits there, and eats
And drinks
And reads
To remember what he has left behind
And where he could have gone
He sits there every morning, and looks across the street to the house
Where the one he loved once lived
He saw her every day, walk past that cafe
But never told her
That her visit kept his heart beating
Beneath his paper skin
In his iron chest
So the man sits there, and drowns in that ocean in his eyes
And he never lets the world know
His pain
And he never let the world know
What happiness he might have had
Or who he is
Beneath his paper skin
He refuses to let his fire
Burn away
Instead the man on Main Street
Flickers on
Because he hates what he is but can’t die yet
Like a lost candle in a vigil
Flickering
Never ending
Never dancing or crackling or hissing

It simply is

Like the faded sign
Next to the man on Main Street