Rhyme Of The Thieving Bum

Walking down the street strolled I with
Three good friends, for food and rum!
When from the nearby dumpster
Came ‘round the ghastly hobo bum.

The hobo caught my arm and held me
With his only eye, a bloodshot lens;
The restaurant’s doors were open wide
and onward continued my friends.

The eye whose gaze did pierced my soul
And filled my spirit with dread.
His voice then rasped, like scraping coals,
And this is what he said;

Dinner-guest, your friends have left,
While your wallet and phone remains.
For drugs or rum, for food or fun
I wish not to anymore abstain!

Once I was a handsome man
With a closet filled with clothes.
I ate fine steaks with high class dames
Till my house the bank foreclosed.

On the street, nothing now to eat,
It was either steal or starve.
So the first man who came down
The unlit lane I intended to carve.

In sank the blade, out the wallet came
But then his face to me turned-
And I saw the white square on his collar bare,
And it was with horror that I learned!

The priest was dead, on the street he bled
And the stain my hands did hold
Could not be washed, I felt a cross
Now weighing down my soul.

Into the blackened depths I sank
Of darkness and of woe.
The chill of fright and mortal fear
Turned my blood to snow.

I could not eat, I could not drink
I could not get warm.
Even on the sunny days
I felt a winter storm.

Woe then when a spirit came
When I should by now have died.
A frightful sprite whose hateful delight
I was expected to provide.

On my back, this demon rode
And oh, the drugs, it made me indulge
And woe, for more, the truckers
I have blown, and more so, the beatings
That broke my bones, and as the diseases
Began to show, the final price and
Lasting toll;

My eye was asked in trade to be
Left alone from the terrible fiend!
The deal struck, the penance priced,
The demon flew and with him my sight.

One eye remained, but I could see
Why the evil spirits had befallen me.
A lesson learned, a moral taught
And now I will be able to change my lot.

But, bum, I interjected quick,
Your robbing me, so what was fixed?
His blood-shoot eye quickly spun around
And held my tongue from further sound.

After this time, I will be done
But before I change I want a little fun.
Once I have gotten high again
I’m sure I can quit, with no problem.

And before I could make any reply
I saw the knife, for it was in my eye!
I felt my wallet and phone removed
Shuffling off he left me there unmoved.

I head the clamor of my friends,
Coming quickly from the restaurant.
And as I bled out where I lay,
I saw a seraph turned away.

Beckoning me, I floated near
As below an ambulance did appear.
The screeching brakes, the flashing lights,
I turned away and walked towards the white.

And as I left this mortal coil,
A sound from beneath me followed.
The thieving homeless hobo bum was
Nearby, robbing another person.