Homeless Campers – Five Sentence Challenge (Prose Poem) – February 5, 2015

Walking along the city streets, wandering and wondering, at the many improvised beds I see of the homeless campers in the streets.

A flattened cardboard box used as a mat, paper and plastic bags to keep out the damp, and layers and layers of old clothes, these for the improvised beds of the homeless campers in the streets.

Ignoring the incessant traffic that rolls by, the midnight partiers who weave through their improvised dormitory, like drunken warders in a private school or those who take their dogs for their last evening spin, but not the police who sometimes round-up the homeless campers in the streets.

In the silence I watch the faces of those who’ve made it as they look on with disgust society’s human failures, who didn’t quite make the grade in our consumer heaven of bubble and bust economy and I see barely hidden fear, that one day they too might become homeless campers in the streets.

It’s bedtime … and I have a bed and home waiting for me, with a mattress and feathered duvet, no traffic, no dogs, no police nor drunks will disturb my rest, but maybe in my dreams I’ll see homeless campers in the streets.

© G.s.k. ‘15

This prose poem was written for:  Five Sentence Fiction – Bedtime