Ballad of the Forgotten

Through rain-slicked streets they shuffle,
Transparent as morning mist —
The ones society erased,
Their stories written in water,
Their names lost to ledgers of neglect.

See them gather:
The cardboard-castle kings,
Shopping-cart queens,
Prophets of the underpass,
Their hollow eyes reflecting
Lightning’s bitter truth.

They march in ragged formation,
These ghosts of system failure,
Past gleaming towers that pierce the clouds
Like needles through hope’s thin skin,
While thunder drums their anthem.

Each spectral footstep echoes
With untold histories:
The veteran’s unanswered prayers,
The mother’s empty cupboards,
The worker’s final paycheck
That couldn’t buy tomorrow.

At the palace gates they pause,
These phantoms of accountability,
Their translucent hands raised
Against gold-plated indifference —
Watch how the rain passes through them,
Each drop a forgotten tear.

But tonight, their silence speaks
Louder than thunder,
Their presence more solid
Than marble and steel,
As they stand witness
To wealth’s cold conspiracy.

The storm builds around them,
Lightning illuminating
Their growing numbers:
Legion of the lost,
Army of the overlooked,
Their rage rising like flood waters
Against privilege’s walls.

Listen now —
Their voices join the wind’s howl,
A chorus of the condemned
Finally finding its fury:
“We are your discarded dreams,
Your inconvenient truth,
Your receipt for paradise purchased
With our pain.

We have come to collect.”

And the gates begin to tremble,
As the forgotten remember
Their power at last,
Their spectral army swelling
Until even the rain
Falls upward in defiance,
Until even the thunder
Speaks their names.