Brief: write a poem about a homeless person who died on a freezing cold january night. it doesn’t need to rhyme
Chatgpt version
In the heart of the city’s icy breath,
A soul, forgotten, faced a bitter death.
Beneath the moon’s pale and distant light,
A homeless spirit succumbed on a frigid January night.
No hearth to warm the weary bones,
No shelter to shield from the chattering stones.
Wrapped in tattered layers of despair,~
They faced the cold with a silent prayer.
City lights blinked in indifferent glow,
As frosty winds whispered tales of woe.
No solace found in the urban sprawl,
A lonely figure succumbed to winter’s call.
On cardboard beds, where dreams turned to frost,
A life extinguished, a poignant cost.
Each exhale painted in the frigid air,
A testament to a world that couldn’t care.
No eulogy spoken, no mournful song,
Just the city’s heartbeat, relentless and strong.
Yet, in the quiet of that icy night,
A story ended without a fight.
No longer burdened by the weight of strife,
The homeless soul transcends this cold, harsh life.
Into the unknown, they find release,
As winter’s grasp grants a final peace.
Bard version
The city slept, a million dreams beneath a sheet of ice,
while shadows stirred, an unseen tide in concrete canyons.
He was a wraith, a wisp of smoke against the steel-edged dawn,
curled beneath a threadbare blanket, breath frosting on the stone.
January’s teeth were bared, the wind a biting whip that lashed,
flaying hope from ragged skin, each rasping breath a prayer.
He’d dreamt of hearth and hound, of supper’s gentle steam,
of walls that held the night at bay, a haven’s whispered gleam.
But dreams are brittle things, like frost upon a pane,
melting with the rising sun, leaving only shards of pain.
The city woke, a symphony of horns and hurried feet,
oblivious to the slumber etched in stillness bittersweet.
A crumpled form, a vacant space where shadows used to lie,
a silent testament to nights beneath a frozen sky.
No name to etch on marble now, no eulogy to sing,
just an empty space that spoke of winter’s cruellest sting.
But let the snowflakes falling soft be whispers on the breeze,
a lullaby for one who found, at last, a troubled heart’s release.
May gentle hands unseen weave warmth from sorrow’s thread,
and mend the tattered tapestry where dreams and shadows bled.
For in the hush of memory, where starlight paints the ground,
a fragile hope takes flight, a silent, circling sound.
He walks in fields of moonlit grain, with laughter on his breath,
no longer lost, no longer cold, embraced by endless death.
So let the city sleep, its dreams beneath a sheet of ice,
while shadows dance, an unseen tide in concrete canyons.
For in the hush of memory, where starlight paints the ground,
a love unspoken lingers, where the lost and lonely found.