Dan: Free Verse

Dan is the nicest man you'll ever meet.
He smiles in the rain.
He finds sunlight in the shadows.
He is a friend to the merchant and the poor alike.
Dan turns his cheek even when the blood streams from it,
and pools on the ground like an offence against God.
For if someone were to hit Dan,
Then a Devil they must be.

Dan is short, and wears a baseball cap on his head like the top of a watchtower,
Gazing out at a grey sea of concrete and broken glass around him.
At night, he stumbles around,
Led by only his own personal light.
His skin is old, and worn, wrinkled like leather and tougher then it too,
But his hands are soft to the touch,
Because they've never held a weapon.
Dan doesn't have enemies, but sometimes does not have friends.
But even the blackest soul that meets him in the night,
Wishes him no harm.
For even a Devil doesn't step on a wallflower.

I met Dan on a morning that was neither sunny nor frosted with cloud,
There was no rain, but the air was still heavy.
He stood at a street corner, smiling at something no one could see.
Approaching me of his own vocation as I stood with a friend.
In 30 seconds, he knew me.
In a minute,  I would have considered us friends.
In two minutes, I admired him,
But that was all I would see of Dan.

Dan is homeless.
Dan never stops moving,
Like a rock rolling down a mellow hill,
Only the hill never ends,
So the rock just goes down, forever.
Gathering momentum as it goes,
And eventually crushing trees and rocks beneath it.
In the end, it was Dan's own weight that brought him down.
That anchor inside him.
That chained his mind to the bottom of an empty sea,
With only itself for company.

Dan didn't know when he became "ill",
All he knew was that he wasn't "right".
Maybe he just didn't see what other people saw,
Or maybe they just didn't really see him.
But Dan had a problem with seeing that no living optometrist,
With all their degrees and knowledge,
Could ever really grasp.

Four hours after I saw him, Dan shot up again.
I didn't see him do it and I didn't hear about it from anyone,
But I can tell you from the scars on his wrist that after he saw me,
He lasted no longer than four hours.
I can picture the veins on his arm,
And that dark needle going into them.
It haunts me.
That needle is killing Dan, taking away the "good" part of him,
And leaving only the "ill" part behind.

Dan might be dead right now.
I looked for him one day,
Among the addicts and the trash and the concrete frames,
But his picture is lost somewhere in there.
The shredder.

But Dan is still the nicest man you'll ever meet.
Because if anything, he chooses to not see what he can't understand.
Because if anything, his shadow eclipses ours,
And because if anything, he's just a photograph in my pocket that can't hurt me anymore than he could.