I am the sidewalk

I am much less than human.
A drawing on the sidewalk, run down by rain.
Here i lay among the the passing feet that trample me
as if were not a person at all.
I am much less than human.
Though i am much more than all of you
who choose to walk selfishly on top on me.
So stare down and spit your used, chewed gum
and toss the cigarettes of which you have sucked the last frail breath
of cancer from.
I am, with no doubt in mind, much more than all of you.

I was a writer before i was here among the feet.
I wrote the poems you recite to your lovers on
cruel cold nights. I wrote the lullabies that put
your children, your selfish needy wanting hateful children,
to sleep. I wrote the magazine article in your hand that you read
at a coffee shop or on the bus to seem more educated and more interesting
to those around you you will never see again.
I wrote the billboard ad slogans, the weather report, the novel synopsis,
the movie review, the song lyrics, the calculator numbers, the car manual
that sits in your glove compartment and waits for its use that will never come.

I was a lover. I was the affair you had behind your wife's back with her nail girl.
The one with the short red hair and lips that teased you every time you went to
pick her up after her appointment. I was the crush you had your first day of school
on the new boy who to all your friends was weird and lonely but, you wanted him.
To be different. To be loved. I was the valentine's card you never got, the letter from war,
the wedding boquet, the guitar chords of your favourite love song, the first date dinner,
the diamond earnings to bought to be forgiven. I am love.

I was the grass. The grass you sat on in the park and doodled the trees and watched
the clouds on. Where you fell from your bike and avoided a skinned knee only to leave me
and try to ride again. The grass you cut for your neighbors one hot summer vacation
to save up for that stereo system that haunted you in the store window on your way
home from school.

But now i am in the sidewalk where people never seem to
notice me. They don't appreciate me here like they did
writing and love and grass. It's a sad life on the pavement, it
really really is. I miss the limelight, the glory, the fame.
No one appreciates the sidewalk anymore.
They just walk.