the privileged at play
This was just one of Shore School’s Year 12 challenges
Find a homeless man.
Look in one of the city’s darkest, loneliest corners, if you dare ..
or under the bushes outside the Town Hall.
A city park. Somewhere away from the lights.
Look for a man huddled on a bench there, alone,
or asleep in an abandoned car in some littered alleyway,
or just lying on the footpath, his soiled belongings scattered about him.
Unwashed, unshaven, his clothes stiff with grime.
Ignore the smell of his body, his unwashed clothes, the putrid stink of his shit.
Find him. White or black. Brown or yellow.
Young or old.
Find him.
Find her.
A woman whose mind has abandoned her, a woman with a past she can’t remember.
Her parents, brothers, sisters.
Her children.
Gone.
A woman nobody remembers.
Find her.
Wretched people you rarely see in daylight. They hide.
Ashamed. Beaten down. Hunted away. They scuttle from place to place like wild dogs caught raiding restaurant bins. They beg, their blackened hands outstretched and misted eyes waiting for a blur to stop and a coin to drop.
Find them. It shouldn’t be too hard.
Take some of your friends with you, the more there are the better luck you will have.
Find one. They are always alone. There is nothing to fear.
Then walk over to it, lean over it, look down on it
Then spit on it.
Without the uniforms they are just like us .. with them, they become something else. This is instilled very early.
petebowes.com 
Beautifully written mate – what a tragic news event – how the privileged lose touch with the REAL world……speak soon
A tragic scenario Pete – perhaps it explains why the world is void of leadership and leaders these days. I guess we reap what we sow.
Incredibly sad story.
I was taught to search for those hands and reach out and lift them up
Through inaction and deflection – the school, the parents, the old boy network will all be complicit in perpetuating this culture of abuse.