I
When my landlord is a slumlord
The sermons also mock God
"There but for Grace go I"
Helps see a plank in my eye
II
Here, no exposing of hypocrisy
Makes a difference to men, women, me:
Sex and money, sex for food -- for lazy
Is the South African -- post-Mandela's day**
Note**
27 April 1994 was the first democratic election in South Africa, RSA, making winner Nelson Mandela both president & freedom's icon. 28 years on, people sometimes prefer welfare, begging, crime - while immigrants run many small businesses, even in remote towns. Easy money has ruined Mandela's nation (it is mine, too, as I am native South African). If one Google's/ searches "loadshedding, RSA" or/AND "minimal Utilities," the declines are given another slant. Power brownouts on New Year's day, also.
The Landlord Regime
They’re sick of the homeless they say the city’s gone to pot
But let’s look at the statistics and let’s see want we have got
We’ve got landlords and slumlords charging an arm and a leg
And then they wonder why people all over are forced to beg
They want to see references with a down payment for heat
Where does one get that when they're coming off the street
You need to have a credit check if you want to live here
We'll throw in a police record check just to make it clear
We only want the tenants who are well off and employed
And the undesirable jobless folk we’ll just strive to avoid
So how is a person who's on a fixed income meant to deal
When expectations from landlords are clearly so unreal
Tides will lecture us, obtrusively, to our faces,
& it's moments like these we unearth
probity in outlooks and lookouts
to crack the skulls of coconuts. some lives
have small windows, & we, like hounds, look
out & bayed full moons, through panes. & pain,
bringing the high to where the last line
is breathed and we are plumbed. & this
takes fix after fix, to cultivate depravities,
gifts & slumlords, spitting from penitentiaries
the rats & their humans. I saw a few.
This is the kind of stools we sit on
when there is more than blood in our veins
Sometimes guitars sing to us, but the lines ...
are flat, shattered lives. In death,
there's no dreaming, just dumb sleep
No more icy showers,
No rats, no roaches,
I’ll never trek reluctantly,
Up your five flights again.
No more neighbors’ yelling,
No slumlords, no supers,
No longer will I freeze,
In your dark bitter space.
Though I’m cautious and weary,
Of the next empty apartment,
I’ll never look back,
Once I step out of your door.
No, no, don’t you worry,
There will always be another,
To suffer inside the hell,
Of your suffocating walls.
Where you will try to break them,
Confine and oppress them,
Until they are empty,
Just like you. Just like me.
*For Matt Caliri's "Empty Apartment" Contest
Surrounded by bozo's,
Accosted by hobo's,
Why won't they leave me alone?
Doomed by soothsayers,
Embezzaled by mayor's,
I practice ignoring their tone!
Evicted by slumlords,
Admitted to psych wards,
I seek to seclude my old bones!
I'm naturally leery, of those who make weary,
My intellect, while promoting their own!
The sly and rapacious,
Could stay out of my space if,
They'd leave their antics at home!
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