Ballad of a Poor Panhandler
Ethan McGuire

September 30, 2020
Pensacola, Florida

I saw a sight on the road one time,
And when I did, had to put it to rhyme.
Was a homeless man who died one day
In the street but how no one can say.

All the cars drove by him that bright morn.
At the red light, saw his clothes were torn,
And sprawled on the sidewalk, dead he lay.
With the green light, the folks drove away.

A cop drove up and pulled to the side,
Yelled at the man, “Move your worthless hide!”
The cop poked the fella with his night stick,
And when the body rolled, the cop turned sick.

The patrolman called out the ambulance,
And he asked Channel 3 for their silence.
Reporters disobeyed, but they flew the coop
When they saw there wasn’t a single scoop.

The ambulance came first chance they could,
But the paramedics said, “No, this ain’t good!
We know this fella, yeah, we know him well.
Uses our hospital like a hotel.”

I guess somebody had told the man,
“Come down to the Gulf shores when you can.
Got showers out there right on the beach.
On the corner you can beg, it’s all in your reach.

“Down on the Gulf they have a little city,
Fine beaches there, and the waves are mighty,
Though if you make yourself some bad luck,
The show’ll be sold out, and you’ll be stuck.”

The old man was born in Flint, Michigan.
The soup kitchen dweller’s tale made him grin.
So he caught the first bus that he could catch.
Wouldn’t need another fire, nor another match.

He’d had a wife and a family once,
But he lost them all within two months
To cancer and to an accident.
Depression took him down, and wouldn’t pay rent.

First it was the bottle, then it was the pills,
Then it was the needle, then he went still,
And then I saw him out upon the road
Where he finally gave up his heavy load.

Further on my trip, I saw a man again
Yelling, “Bound to lose or bound to win!
But if you cannot quit your sinnin’ today,
Tell me will you quit your hurtful ways?”

Well, I saw a sight on the road one time.
As soon as I did, had to put it to rhyme.
Was a homeless man, he died one day
In the street but how nobody can say.

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Ethan’s notes: “‘Ballad of a Poor Panhandler’ is a true story I witnessed while living in Pensacola, Florida and working at a hospital there. It is also both ‘after’ and ‘to the tune of’ Millard Lampell’s 1941 song ‘The Strange Death of John Doe,’ itself a slight reworking of a nineteenth-century American folk song.”

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Ethan McGuire is a writer, healthcare worker, and computer scientist whose essays, poems, short stories, and translations have appeared in Blue Unicorn, The Dispatch, Emerald Coast Review, New Verse News, VoegelinView, and other publications. He is an editor at Tar River Poetry, Literary Matters, and New Verse Review and the author of Songs for Christmas, Apocalypse Dance, and Ozark Son. Ethan lives with his wife and children in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

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Ballad of a Poor Panhandler Ethan McGuire

Ballad of a Poor Panhandler
Ethan McGuire