Home Issues Contributors Submissions Contact Links Take Action PoetryDepot
Michael Shorb
Homeless Camp Near the Lamborghini
Dealership On Van Ness Boulevard
A man is sleeping on the street
Cocooned in a gray bag
Surrounded by a fortress
Of two shopping carts
And a blue plastic box
Most prominent jutting
From the carts is a TV set
With a broken screen
Rabbit ears intact
Ten yards down the street
The quiet opulence of faded
Brown marble the building
A relic of times when buildings
Were made of marble and carved
Lion faces stare proudly
Into the passing traffic
Behind thick windows
The Lamborghini Murcielago
Stands like a low-slung
Space ship in shocking yellow
On a stand the $293,600 price tag
Strikes me as strange
600 extra dollars piled on
$293,000? Isn't that rubbing it in?
For the bargain-minded
The Lamborghini Gallardo in
Sleek metallic silver is only $174,000.
Now that's more like it
I think as I wait for a bus
And a man already drunk at 10:00
In the morning weaves down the street
A New Year's Eve celebration of one
And the man in the fort wakes up
Stares intently at the broken screen
"Nothing on but a bunch of bullshit."
He mumbles into the sunlight.
Copyright (c) Michael Shorb, 2005. All rights reserved.
Web page design by Velene Campbell
Web page editing and site optimization by Peter Bunce - e-mail: techsolutions@netscape.net