General

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The Roadsweeper

By Lee Baroukh

There down the street he goes.
It is the roadsweeper
Pushing his heavy black cart
With a big brown broom attached
And a sharp metal claw to snatch up
Coke cans and wrappers.

He sweeps the roads to earn his keep
And helps to make our world free from pollution.
Slowly he plods on hunched against the cold,
Dressed in a silver reflective coat
To be seen in the dark by the cars
That whiz on by.

He works away in rain or shine
As people continue to dirty our streets.
Sssh, sssh, sssh, is the sound of his broom as he sweeps.
Bit by bit the cart fills up
With rotting leaves, empty bottles and scraps of paper.
I wonder who was so lazy as to drop their litter?

Was it because they knew someone else would clean it up?
Or do they just not care?
As I walk down the road
He gives me a smile
And seems not to mind sweeping the road
For us.

 

The Man With No Home

By Michael Baroukh

The man with no home,
Is a fiery, skinny man,
With blazing, battered and beefy eyes.
He sits there day and night,
Begging for shiny, valuable coins,
"Spare change if you, please."
He wails looking into my eyes.

I wonder what his life was before,
Before he became this lonely man,
Dressed in other peoples rags,
Once was a boy like me somehow he's made some bad
decisions and now he's wasting his life on the streets.

To me he is a raging warrior,
Fighting against the world to survive,
In a weary place fighting for coins,
Does anybody care if he's dead or alive?
He's watching the customers walk out,
With big heavy bulging bags of food,
Tempting him.
They think of him as a ghost that is not visible,
He's a mess, a shambles,
And no one cares for him,
While he's rotting away.

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