The Ordinary Man

The city smiled in polished glass,

in painted gold, in velvet brass,

in roads that shone like rivers do

beneath a manufactured blue.

Its towers rose in silver streams,

its windows held a thousand dreams,

and every street was bright and wide,

as if no sorrow lived inside.

The people laughed.

The people shone.

No one was ever quite alone.

They wore their colours loud and proud,

each one a star inside the crowd,

with diamond wrists and feathered coats,

with perfume caught inside their throats.

One wore scarlet, one wore green,

one dressed like something never seen.

One wore sorrow stitched in silk,

one wore pride as smooth as milk.

They all looked strange,

they all looked new,

they all looked like they wanted to.

And high above, the city cried,

with all its pretty lights applied:

Be unlike the rest.

Be rare.

Be more.

Be proof that you were here before.

But down below, where engines sighed,

where painted buses crawled and dried,

where crosswalk lines lay pale and still,

there came a man against his will.

His head was low.

His coat was plain.

His shoes were wet from morning rain.

No rings.

No scarf.

No careful flare.

No statement hanging in the air.

Just work-worn sleeves,

a tired face,

a man misplaced inside the place.

His trousers grey,

his shirt the same,

his body moving without claim.

And as he crossed that perfect road,

beneath the city’s shining load,

his shoes gave out a little squeak,

small, ashamed,

and almost weak.

Squeak.

The people turned,

but not their eyes.

They hid their faces in disguise.

A woman watched a window shine.

A boy laughed loud at no real line.

A man adjusted golden cuffs.

A girl looked down and checked her gloves.

They did not stare.

They would not dare.

They only emptied all the air.

For in that place where all must glow,

where all must bloom and all must show,

the plainest man beneath the sun

became the most offensive one.

He wished the road would split in two.

He wished the sky would let him through.

He wished the earth, with gentle breath,

would hide him somewhere under death.

Not death with thunder, blood, or flame,

not tragedy that earns a name,

but just a quiet sinking down,

below the lights, below the town.

For ordinary was a crime

inside that city out of time.

And this was how the truth began:

the strangest thing

was just a man.

The only one who did not try

became the wound in every eye.

The only one who did not pose

became the thorn beneath the rose.

They all were different, so they said,

with painted lips and lifted head,

but difference there had grown so wide

it folded back on its own pride.

For when they all refused the same,

they played a very similar game.

Each soul became a shop display.

Each heart was dressed and sent away.

Each grief was polished, named, and sold.

Each fear wore silver, lace, or gold.

No one could simply love a song.

They had to prove they loved it wrong.

No one could simply wear the red.

They had to bleed it, brand it, spread

a story through the cloth they wore,

then change it by the week once more.

No one could laugh unless the sound

was rare enough to turn heads round.

No one could cry unless the tear

had meaning sharp enough to hear.

They feared the matching of a shade.

They feared a choice already made.

They feared a coat another owned.

They feared the ordinary bone.

They were not free.

They were not bright.

They were just running from the sight

of someone else who looked too near,

of shared desire,

of common fear.

They did not want to simply be.

They wanted proof of rarity.

But money on a wrist still ticks

toward dust and worms and candle wicks.

A diamond does not stop the vein

from opening under grief or pain.

No silk can keep the body young.

No perfume sweetens every tongue.

No custom coat, no sacred shoe

can make the blood inside less true.

They all bled red.

Not royal red.

Not rich-man red.

Just human red.

The red of birth.

The red of knees.

The red of begging someone, please.

The red of bodies, soft and breakable,

tender, frightened, deeply shakable.

They drove the same roads under rain,

past the same lamps, through the same pain.

They walked the same paths, day by day,

though painted doors stood in the way.

They breathed one air.

They feared one night.

They chased one small approving light.

They loved.

They lied.

They lost.

They stayed.

They watched their parents slowly fade.

And at the end, when noise was done,

when every colour lost the sun,

when every ring was taken off,

when velvet gathered dust and moth,

when no one cared what shade they wore,

or what they tried to be before,

they too would lie beneath the hours,

a name,

two dates,

and dying flowers.

Flowers bending in the rain,

flowers withering without pain,

flowers placed by trembling hands

that soon would join the same dark lands.

And no one there would truly know

which one wore silver, which wore snow,

which one was strange, which one was loud,

which one stood brightest in the crowd.

A grave does not applaud your art.

It only keeps your quiet heart.

So still the city painted lies

across its bricks, across its skies.

The cars all wore a different skin,

but had the same old parts within.

The wheels all turned, the engines coughed,

the polish gleamed, the paint peeled off.

Some were gold and some were black,

some had mirrors down the back,

some were loud and some were sleek,

some looked mighty, some looked weak,

but all would rust,

and all would slow,

and all would end where old things go.

The buildings wore a different tint,

but brick is brick beneath the print.

One was blue and one was white,

one caught fire from morning light,

one stood narrow, one stood tall,

one had ivy on the wall,

yet every tower, every stone,

was common earth and borrowed bone.

Paint it rich or paint it poor,

time still knocks on every door.

Paint it gold or paint it grey,

time still comes and takes its pay.

The clothes were threads.

The jewels were stones.

The songs were air through borrowed bones.

Every style became a trial.

Every smile became a file.

Every name played the same game.

Every flame burned much the same.

They dressed their dread in velvet seams.

They sold their shame as private dreams.

They wore their scars like polished rings.

They turned their wounds to market things.

But underneath the dye and show,

under the need to be known,

the same hearts beat, the same eyes cried,

the same small child stayed trapped inside.

And still they called him plain.

Still they called him wrong.

Still his squeaking shoes moved on.

Squeak.

Through streets that glittered, bright and wide.

Through crowds that opened at his side.

Through laughter sharp as broken glass.

Through lives that watched but let him pass.

He did not speak.

He did not plead.

He carried no impressive need.

He did not turn his pain to brand.

He did not make his sadness grand.

He did not shape himself for praise,

or set his loneliness ablaze.

He woke.

He worked.

He crossed the street.

He moved on ordinary feet.

And that was why they looked away.

Not hate alone.

Not simple shame.

But something older with no name.

Because the man they would not see

was everything they feared to be.

The city first had looked alive,

a humming, golden, perfect hive,

with music spilling from the walls,

with laughter strung through market stalls.

But now the laughter sounded thin,

like bells trapped under painted skin.

The smiles clicked on.

The bright clothes begged.

The towers stood like bodies pegged

against the sky, too proud to fall,

too hollow to be homes at all.

The roads no longer seemed to run.

They looped beneath a tired sun.

The windows did not shine with grace.

They stared back like a judging face.

The colours did not bloom.

They bled.

The city was not alive.

It was dead.

Not dead like ruins.

Dead like performance.

Dead like a room full of people clapping

because silence would be worse.

Dead like a flower painted red

long after all its roots had fled.

Dead like a song too scared to cease.

Dead like a war dressed up as peace.

And there, beneath the perfect glow,

the ordinary man walked slow.

Head low.

Shoes worn.

Coat grey.

The city moved itself away.

Because he was not dirt upon its light.

He was not failure.

He was not night.

He was the truth beneath the art.

The undecorated, common heart.

He was the brick beneath the tint.

The engine under golden print.

The blood beneath the diamond wrist.

The thing their bright lives could not twist.

He was the face without the frame.

The human shape beneath the name.

The quiet fear.

The tired breath.

The road they all would walk to death.

They hated him because he showed

the sameness underneath the road.

They hated him because his stare,

though lowered, filled the shining air.

They hated him because he knew

without a speech, without a clue,

without rebellion, noise, or pride,

that all their colours could not hide

the simple truth,

the final shame,

the one thing burning under fame:

beneath the silk, beneath the show,

beneath the desperate need to glow,

beneath the gold, beneath the flowers,

beneath their borrowed, decorated hours,

the city was ordinary too.

And that was why it could not look at him.