Poem # 8: He's a Lonely Man

He's a lonely man
Who is not alone,
In a foreign land
He calls home.
He speaks
Urdu, Bengali, Swahili,
And at times
Gutteral clicks
To his family.
In his head,
He speaks plain English.

Eyes stop, stare, blink;
Heads turn;
Bodies walk away--
They pretend to not
Understand him,
Or appreciate him,
As a man.
They encourage
And coerce him to assimilate
Or he may be left behind.
Yet he knows they already left.