bumbling thoughts on poverty

The following is free verse that I wrote after walking through the center portion of the city 2 weeks ago. I see a broken and limping humanity, but my compassion for it is just as weak.

Who cares about the trash you’re moving around in the street?
Are you the only one?
That spent styrofoam cup, the chip bag tossed aside by a carefree kid
Are more like treasure than rubbish to you.

Drawn coffee-brown skin, filthy long fingernails,
Scraggly yellowed hair, scrawled mutterings of a neglected soul.
Your dark race put you here, tramped-on leftover of a white-eyed society.

What am I bid for the street beggar?
50 centavos, no mas.
Where does he sleep? Who cares.
What’s he like? Well, he babbles a lot.
What thoughts does he carry in that patent-busting brain?

The crowd around loves the flash, the look, la moda.
Looking to drop plenty to catch the envying eye
Of those supposedly less fortunate,
Jockeying for position.

In the bustle, he’s huddled up
(I almost stepped on him),
Busted, rusted guitar strains out what he knows,
A few broken chords,
A symphony of pleaded sympathy.

What’s the value of that human soul, so easily kicked aside
Like a used styrofoam cup?

Could it be as much as my own?