Store
Lording over the landscape like giant
Insects sucking soul, blood, chocolate
into multi-colored mushrooms
Metastasizing citywide.
Officers ordering vacant storefronts,
lined up like soldiers, to make money,
while brothers with cupped hands
platoon on plastic crates at entrances to
$4-a-cup coffee shops with belligerent baristas.
Beneath fiery crimson skies,
afternoon freeways are fuming parking lots.
Capitalism’s poisoning water and air,
and ignorant exploiters don’t care!
Pyramids and huts; tuxes and tails,
unwashed butts – tents and jails.
First come the cranes – then the
Tents, skyrocketing mortgages – then the
Rents … money, money, money for military
Bases in far off places – but, it’s “Pie in the
sky” to demand affordable living spaces!
Basketball team’s outgrown The Town,
football team’s slipping off to Sin
City after slurping at the trough …
Capitalism’s poisoning water and air,
and ignorant exploiters don’t care!
Pyramids and huts; tuxes and tails,
unwashed butts – tents and jails.
First come the cranes – then the
Tents, skyrocketing mortgages – then the
Rents … money, money, money for military
Bases in far off places – but, it’s “Pie in the
sky,” to demand affordable living spaces!
And we play dress-up in grown folks’ clothes –
Tiny red, white and blue stickers – pretending
we’re fixing it in 20 minutes … every two-four years …
© 2018. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved. Raymond Nat Turner is an acclaimed poet and performing artist. You can find much more of his work at http://upsurgejazz.com .
