Humanity (The Man in the Alleyway)

Is it lost in the miasma of your resignation?
Where is your humanity?
Was it discarded with the last of your inhibitions?
Where is your humanity?
Does it flail somewhere between my compassion
and my need for your accountability?
What a travesty the former is beholden to the latter,
for there is no sincerity in mercy
that is bound by terms and conditions.
Oh, it is an arrogance born not of ignorance, but of understanding.
For the demon that twitches in your neck
and burns in your febrile and sleepless eyes
once twisted and burned in mine.
But I banished that which I had summoned
and arrogated a tenuous claim to sanity.
Blinded now by a myopic gaze into the synthetic light of this modern reality,
I cannot see, God help me, I cannot see,
oh stranger, oh fellow creature,
I cannot see your humanity.