John Doe 171

Once I was a man
Today, I am just a number
I came to LA filled with dreams
When, I cannot remember
May have been August
Could have been December
So many years have come and gone
The date no longer matters
My search for work brought me here
After the factory burnt to the ground
I roamed the streets, read the want ads
There were no jobs to be found
Those first nights were so lonely
My thoughts returned to home
I missed my wife, missed my kids
But this I had to do alone

Now days, became weeks, turned into years
In every way I have been a failure
I cannot return and face them now
Fate denies me that pleasure
So I have been reduced to begging on the corner
Though no one seems to notice
Unless I find myself in jail
When the force must fill their quotas
I spend my nights escaping
Crawling into a bottle of the cheapest wine
My stomach is usually empty
I only eat what I steal or find
Friends are few and far between
A few men who share my plight
We sit around small trash fires
We must make a sorry sight
Life continues to grow harder
I seem to have lost the will to live
No one seems to understand
I once had so much to give

I died alone last night
An old and broken man
I just lay upon the ground
I never rose again
No one even noticed
No one seemed to care
Pedestrians stepped around me
I wasn’t even worth a stare
Until I began to rejoin the earth
And pollute their precious air
Than finally someone called a mortician
Who took me away from here
They laid me out on a metal slab
They gave me an empty number
The tag reads John Doe 171
I’m a man no one will remember