The Pilot

The homeless man sleeps in the rain
He steals and sells to buy his pain
The homeless man knows not his kin
His wife and kids abandoned him

A single shirt and pants he packs
Picking cigarettes from cracks
He roams and knows not where he goes
As a river only flows

No direction, sight or sound
He makes him bed upon the ground
Has he always been this way?
Will he swim to shore one day?

Do his parents even know,
The depths their son has had to go?
How can one man stay afloat,
Without life jackets on his boat?

In the air he made his name
As a pilot on a plane
He had a drink and then came down
He scattered bodies on the ground

He lost his job, yet that’s not all
He wished he’d died during that fall
He sleeps and dreams and does relive
The lives he took that he can’t give

Survivor’s guilt had ruined him
He could not take this on the chin
He tried to dig an early grave
A single life he cannot save

The pain he walks with in his eyes
His only friends: fear and demise
He drinks to numb and fill the hole
He prays a pardon for his soul

God does know of this man’s pain
His broken crutch does make him lame
Death is now at every turn
Will his lesson this man learn?

He strolls the streets begging for change
A light to bum, a bed to lay
The food he needs to fill his mouth
A drink he cannot go without

The sun now beats upon this man
The sores that break upon his hand
The bum could be both you and me
Dying when he could be free

The sun will set, but it will rise
The lesson he won’t realize
He won’t be free until he breaks
The chains that hold onto his fate

Heavy shoulders, head down low
He has no other place to go
He feels the air and cannot breathe
But the sun is there upon his cheek