It's Hard to Sleep

I was asked to write a performance piece for a campus event called "The Art of Change", which sheds light on social issues and hopes to use the arts to spread awareness. I decided to write a piece on Homelessness, from the perspective of a homeless man. Please read it and tell me what you think, if you have the time..

It's Hard to Sleep


It’s hard to sleep with the honking of horns and blaring of sirens
Ringing in my head;
Suits and high heels bustling over me without
Care if I’m alive or dead;
It’s even harder when breakfast is a breath of stale city air, and coffee
Is flowing down the drain;
All I can do is sit and hope for the generosity of a stranger, or a bath
Of fresh acid rain.

It’s hard to sleep when I can’t fluff my cold concrete pillow,
And the creased cardboard blanket doesn’t cover my feet;
It’s difficult knowing the summary of a life, a legacy, an existence
Is strewn across a dirty street;
It’s easy to judge a man in tattered clothes, who hangs his head
In shame and filth;
A man whose greatest torture is not holey pockets or empty stomachs,
But a heart overflowing with guilt.

It’s hard to sleep without the warmth of a family,
The gentle embrace of a lover.
It’s hard to dream, when your dreams float on the drunken piss
That flows down a grimy gutter;
I rue the day my life became a packet of white powder, sending me
To the heights of oblivion;
Indulgence is the crime, whose sentence is either death,
Or life in an open air prison.

It’s hard to sleep when behind closed eyelids are visions of
A better life, departed;
It pains me to know that life is not but a lost opportunity
To finish what was started;
It’s funny how we bust our asses to put our lives on paper
To hang on walls;
It was easy to make the wrong decisions, but to change my life,
I didn’t have the gall.

It’s hard to sleep when you your biggest fear is waking up alone
Under grey skies;
Yet the more I’m awake, the more overwhelming the desire is
To close my eyes;
I dream of past days of full plates, good friends,
And laughter;
And I curse story books for lying to me about living
Happily ever after;

It’s hard to sleep when I think of them hugging another man on the third
Sunday of June;
Seems like yesterday they were little bundles of joy, treasures I gave up
All too soon;
It sucks when your good deeds go unnoticed, and your life is defined by a few
Painful mistakes;
And I hate that I floored the accelerator when I should have been
Slamming the brakes;

It’s hard to sleep amidst the foul stench, the rodents, and heaps of
Every day refuse;
To them, I belong here, among the discarded; worthless and
No longer of use;
My arms often ache from extending palms to catch crumbs, left-overs and
Loose change;
Sometimes all I get is foul language, spat on and even kicked
If I’m in range.

It’s hard to sleep when the starry sky looks so beautiful through the smog and smoke and
Trails of sin;
My life, once like a brilliant shooting star, is now a cold rock
Next to a garbage bin;
It’s easy to smile when you have shoes, clean clothes, money
And a big house for a home;
But it’s not so easy when modernity pushes you off a cliff and leaves you in a gorge,
Broken and alone;

It’s hard to sleep waiting for loved ones to come to rescue you
One day,
But it burns my soul when those I know pass and stare at me, then
Turn their eyes away;
In a way I deserve to be here, a dying fungus grasping on to life in
The cesspit of society;
It’s a punishment for trying to take the easy road, and sacrificing stability
And sobriety.

It’s hard to sleep when your conscience screams at you with cries of “Idiot”,
“I told you so” and “You’re not worth it anymore”;
It’s hard to exist when to the world you’re nothing but a scar, a burden,
A hobo and an eyesore;
I wish I had done more to save myself, but now it’s far too little and
Too late;
I wish I had lived with hope, love and restraint, instead of pessimism, anger,
And hate.

It’s hard to sleep with open sores, a hungry belly, and
A broken heart;
It pains to think of how a few careless days can tear
An entire life apart;
It’s tough to keep my wits, when every day I test the limits
Of my sanity;
But the hardest part?
The hardest part is keeping the one thing I haven’t yet lost:
My humanity.