The Bum Cycle

[Nitaidas]

Here are some poems I wrote that I refer to as the Bum Cycle. It is about a bum whose wife has passed on and whose daughter has abandoned him living out the rest of his days in a city park somewhere remembering and feeling somewhat drawn to his past as a college teacher but given to transcendent reveries and not a little bit affected by dementia.

The Homeless Pandit

In a dream I stood\\
before a faded, ancient mirror\\
in the dingy hall of a tenement.\\
Stale odors and muffled sounds \\
of habitation closed around.\\
Outside rain poured down,\\
a drumming, threatening and persistent.

The door next to the mirror\\
that framed my weathered face\\
swung open suddenly\\
and there stood a young black woman,\\
tall, on her way out, coated for the rain.\\
She started when she saw me.\\
I, too, jumped at her sudden presence.\\
I smiled. She smiled back,\\
nervously, and stode quickly past\\
swinging her door firmly closed behind.

I pulled off my pungent shirt\\
and searched my worn, torn bag\\
for one less like a rag\\
and my one wrinkled tie.\\
Will they hire a bench-sitter like me?\\
No time to shave, nor razor even.\\
Just my shining intellect to dazzle them,\\
and a sports coat wrinkled and slightly soiled.\\
Which will they note? Intellect or coat?\\
I rehearsed my mantras\\
while straightening my tie.\\
``I've taught that before.\\
Teaching is my very life.\\
Students are my gods.''\\
None of them true, formulas all.\\
But maybe they still had magic.

Imagine\\
this homeless man\\
teaching college again.\\
I saw the ad and placed the call.\\
But an inner voice now said: ``no chance at all.''\\
Another said: ``why disturb your peace?\\
Haven't you sought the way to release?''

Homeless indeed is what I am.\\
But aren't we all without a home?\\
Where indeed do we truly dwell?\\
My mind inhabits K\d{r}\d{s}\d{n}a's world,\\
my body a bench in M\=ay\=a's realm.\\
Where then is my real place?\\
Would it not be much the same\\
if I lived in a mansion and had a big name?

Slowly I removed my tie\\
and with an embarrassed smile,\\
looked into the mirror for a while.\\
In that image's tired eyes I saw,\\
almost like a reflective flaw,\\
the glance of some young girl.

[nrisingha]

Good style Nitai!

[kingcobra]

Yeah! Oh, yeah! Way to go mate. To that theme we can all relate.

[Deleted]

YEAH.