Right across the street
from the back side of the
Ronald
Reagan State Building,
people are sprawled out,
hungry
cold, tired, pale around the
edges
an imagine struggling to be
seen.
The entrance to the building
is on Spring Street,
around the corner
where, like the street’s name,
everyone has it in their step.
You can see it, they walk
fast, the way people who
have somewhere to go
walk fast.
On Main, the side where the
entrance
isn’t early pedestrians
scramble too
to get to…get away.
“Get away, shoo”
They shoo away
panhandler’s pleadings with a
turn of the head
tune them out with a blast of
their car stereo
hoping the radio waves will
push them away.
In the shadows of the Ronald
Reagan
“the great communicator” State
Building
people shake and shiver in the
streets
flag their hunger,
frustration,
sickness in proximity of
governmental grandeur.
Is it the early morning chill licking
their scaly skin?
Do they shake and shiver for a
fix?
Or from the ghosts of past
wars that harass
them? They scream at and argue
with those voices to no end.
They didn’t fight in wars that
Reagan orchestrated.
His M.O.
have nations kills their own.
Daddy Reagan provided
financial and military aid
to right wing governments in
El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala.
Funding his campaign to
eradicate “communism”
en esas tierras with
arms-for-hostages deal
he made with Iran. All part of
a greater plan
to down the indigenous, down
the students
down labor, push down all
uprisings
crush them down till their
eyes
grew streams of red
and heart of resistance
crumbled.
He put them out
those hearts On fire.
Like steel blades against a ledge
Shits went off.
Services, mental health,
preschool, arts program, benefits for the vets
sharply cut, messy
murder scene, a crime the way
the government disregards
people.
They, the people on skid row could
just be seeing red like late notices
piled up on the dinning room table
Is it going to take
a crime to get out of this one?
Here we like to call it a hustle
Gotta stop the shivering in
front of the back entrance
to that building, Ronal Reagan
once again
with the cold shoulder.
Kitty-corner from
La Costeña Bar with it’s
all black matte walls, red
trim,
plywood palm trees leaning
towards
each other, people-
the people, shake and shiver
gathered underneath an elm
tree, slap hands
in the middle of a traffic meridian
smoke on butts, sip out of
steamy cups.
What a sight
Cardboard boxes piled up to
build
a fortress big enough to make
a
kid’s eyes and imagination go
wild,
but homelessness is no child’s
play
and although it never rains in
Southern Cali
44 degrees at 4 o’clock in the
morning
don’t play.
Skid row-
an image wavering
on the fringes of
revitalization…just missed it
out of sight, always out of
mind.
Like a head in the clouds, or
condos
that scrape the LA skyline
giving inhabitants
the feel that they’ve risen
above it all.
A woman leans against a fence,
sits
on her concrete throne
tugs at a wrinkled not so
hefty trash bag,
stretches the edges
till they turn gray
pulling for an extra inch of
shelter.
You think she’s a displaced
“welfare queen”
fantasizing about the days
when she had 3 Cadi’s in the
garage?
Now the only cruising she does
is outside
the shelter around soup
kitchen time.
Welfare queen
Her glamour draws you in
see how she was living
paycheck to paycheck
trying to
stretch that dollar
like a Hefty bag- but she already
knows that she just can’t cover it all.
She's living off of uncle
SAMs handouts they tell you
just a distraction away from the tax cuts
Uncle Sam is giving his
Richie friends
Exxon, JPMorgan, Chase and them
And any other WASP
Who's dignity
and pride in doing work
merits a little reward
"Don't worry we'll throw down
some crumbs
as we cut programs
That's that trickle down theory on y'all asses
Hope and IOUs control the masses!"
Stop the Symbolic violence
Where is good ole Uncle Sam
now?
He’s not going to bail her out
too much government is a
problem
remember. Remember that as
they
bail out, Wall Street, Banks
of America and Autos.
