If you go outside even today,
temperature scheduled for 103 F,
you will see the white trash under their cars
doing oil & lube jobs in the parking lot.
Not me, not yet.
I left my car keys in the door last week
and nobody stole my car or keyed the doors.
I felt grateful but almost insulted.
I own a car not worth stealing?
Maybe the shade of the cars
protects against the heat: a treble
utility. Not just change your oil
not just shade yourself
but not have to pay dumping fees.
I have lost my sense of democracy and social justice,
Gustavo Gutierrez would be angry with me.
Living here has turned me to an elitist
among the Pennsylvania version of Council Houses,
made me think of John Arden socialist paradise Sixties drama
in which I play not a role but myself
chewing on a pipe-stem, saying "Arrrgghhh!" like a sailor with the clap,
to scare little kids who would say worse--because they're armed--to scare me.
Maybe when the weather breaks I will reassume
my mask of democratic egalitarianism and
feel for the poor because I've joined them.
Or maybe I will remain what extremes expose,
Sucker with his nose turned up so high
that he can smell the crack and free-base
cooking up in the next building over.
KW/7-7-10
(No joke this time, one draft, maybe two corrections. The Brits here probably know Arden and how he wrote about Council Housing. Gutierrez is a Dominican Catholic theologian who wrote a wonderful book on Job as the outcry of the poor in the face of God's and man's collaborative injustices.)
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Ken Wolman http://awfulrowing.wordpress.com/
"All writers are hunters, and parents are the most available prey."
--Francine du Plessix Gray
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