The Bag Man’s Tale

        An ode to the necessary medical removal of human dignity

Shuffling so very slowly down the street with your head cast sadly down

Carefully, so very carefully, one foot painfully, and barely, after another

Each step awaiting agony, with every tiny bump a shooting pain

Yet, that last one was not that bad, maybe just one more might be all right

How can you really help yourself when you walk so stiffly and so slowly?

Perhaps you should have just remained drugged and on your back in bed

So tired now after a tortured quarter-mile covered in just under 20 minutes

Young children sense fearfully the malignancy that controls your painful gait

Even small dogs, emboldened by your weakness, approach to run you off

There is no point in even looking at the young men passing by

And the women really do not see your faint shadow from their shiny cars

But the old people nod in recognition, remembering well, at the sight of you

Creeping along not lifting your feet or ever even bending your knees

Bag man with that disgusting mystery no one ought to see

Practicing the humility with which debasement has replaced your dignity

When they say that things could be worse they often point at you

Bag man, gray face sculpted by chronic pain into a wickedly grinning skull

Trying very desperately to walk so smoothly that he won’t feel a thing

Toenails grown long and yellow, white stubble and hairy earlobes

What made you scuttle into the light In those funny, wrinkled bedclothes?

Your sparse hair is sticking out in all directions and you don’t know or care

You’re too thin and the children see the yellow bruises from all of your injections

The muscles in your long thin neck distend as you grit your teeth with every step

Onlookers long to scream, just straighten up your back and walk upright like a man

The shabby slippers that you are wearing look so very wrong out on the street

Your weak presence both a lesson and an affront to the busy lives of others

Mr. Bagman shuffle back home now and fumble through all your medications

You’ve become all those things you never thought you could possibly grow up to be

Your pallor is unnerving and there is a redness about the whites of your eyes

You try to avoid their glances and answer in strained monosyllables

Your life reduced to merest painful basics, not unlike those great oriental Zen masters

Finding vast relief in the simple stillness following the great suffering of your trek