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Down the beach,
To a place people rarely reach.
There was a man who plays bongos all alone.
I would sit and watch in the distance as the sun shone.
His arms whirling through the
air,
So great a thing he has to share.
But nobody ever comes to hear.
Even though they know he's there.
It's kinda sad the things we
see,
So quickly we judge what makes a person be.
Perhaps the bongo player has the key.
And while we're all locked out, he is free.
I wanted to get into his mind,
Find out what made him so different from our kind.
Leaving the rest of us so blind,
Searching hopelessly for something we can never find.
Every day I went closer, inching
my way.
But, then I would stop and nervously stay.
Over an over again I thought about what I would say,
As the sun slowly crept away from the bay.
The sounds blared into the
dark,
Beaming and bouncing and leaving a mark.
It seemed easier to draw near him,
For I could not see the face,
That many who had, tried so desperately to erase.
The drumming stopped and he was gone, without a trace.
Many days went by and he never
came back.
I read an article about a man who died and a story about the attack.
The headline read "Bum Killed on Local Beach".
They said he was a crazy and
other things but they lied.
I wouldn't know until the next day and then I cried.
For they ripped into pieces the soul of the man who had died,
The man who played bongos with the rising tide.
On the black and white page
there was a picture of a man,
The obituary said his name was Sam.
Later the paper would get sued for the initial article they ran.
But, for a moment people wouldn't forget the story of how he began.
He came to America in search
of the light,
For the endless opportunities that we take granted as a right.
He saved up money, married his honey and sent all his children off to
school.
Shortly after they left, he bought a smaller house by the beach with
a pool.
A child drowned one day in
late May.
They blamed it on him and the little girl's father said, "You'll
surely pay".
The house was on fire when he awoke.
By the time he found his wife she was burnt real bad and his heart was
broke.
He lay in the hospital for
many years.
They said he would never make it out,
That the rest of his life would be a solemn bout.
The only thing that didn't
burn was his hands,
Everything else was crippled and lame.
He didn't mind the burns but missed his wife and never felt the same.
He never spoke a word after
he left.
He went to the beach and played every other day.
Parents and their children stayed away,
Teenagers poked fun at him and tortured him as if it was play.
I would never see that face
that I had feared,
That made me miss out on meeting a man so endeared.
Struck by this man's face in the death notice now.
Asking how it could be the same man that made me scared, how?
When people saw him without
the burns,
They all took turns.
Apologizing to themselves for not seeing underneath,
Behind the grotesque visions and the alleged seethe.
He was dead,
Like the paper said.
Killed for no reason,
Forgotten by many the very next season.
So this is for the man I wished
I knew,
The man they called Samuel A.
May you rest in peace wherever you lay.
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