Starving Down Madiba Lane
By four o’clock you see them on the walk
in Sunnyside and Greenpoint
And know them by their excess of attire
The manner of their chatter and their talk
The falsehood of the laughter in their voice
The hungry pain in haunting, hollow eyes
Their frankly sexual outward provocation
A sour sweetness, reeking of their lies.
By four AM they’re on the street again
Or gone to satisfy some random lust
That crossed their path some time in the night
Two lives caught out in empty freedom’s blight
Each starving for the thing the other brings
To trade on terms that squander dignity––
That most subtle and elusive promised right––
‘til rising, each leaves poorer from their deal.
In this, at least, they are in one sad measure, equal.
At noon they can be seen in muscled cars
Cruising with a loud, dull, vapid beat
Among the walking victims of their trade
Pretentious masters of their too small world
Lords over those they have enslaved
By selling freedom from the harsh realities
Of desperation and untransform-ed lives.
Picking pockets clean while numbing minds
Careless of the ever mounting crimes
And body count required to fuel
Their sordid little empire of the blind.
He walks along a line of drivers waiting for the green
Looking for some small consideration.
Lacking skills, he lives by wits and cunning
Offering for his livelihood nothing but a plea
And some small measure of absolution to a guilty soul.
His scribbled sign and outstretched hand
The only reasonable measure yet devised
To secure to him the solemn promised right
Of decent access to his basic needs
And the dignity he’s only ever known
By its being denied to him - or neglected -
By those impatient to increase their own.
At 5 PM round back the other side
You catch them slipping past with tinted glass
From heavily defended bunkered jobs––
Those with a beneficial interest in the security
They’ve built to cocoon their transformed lives.
Their auto locks snap quietly in place, they glide along
Passing their cousins, their erstwhile comrades,
Their disinherited offspring of a political affair
That gave to one an office and a street to bear his name
And to the other, the right to trade or starve upon her lover’s lane.
They change some names and call it transformation
The heroes of this day inscribed in stone, sculpture, airport, street and town ––
While heroes of another day are easily torn down––
And they imagine this time is forever.
But on the streets, and in the parks and hills
The tide of restless, static, lives grows desperate still ––
Still hurt, still lost, still empty, homeless, begging
Still trading their bodies, drugging their minds
Insensate to the joy they are supposed to feel
That the street on which they starve is named for a hero of the people.