ON THE COLD SIDE OF THE FIRE
On the cold side of the fire
where the poor sit
there’s more magnanimity in a maggot
than there is in a tapeworm.
At least you can see it.
It doesn’t eat alone in the dark
like a midwife with a garotte around a child’s gut.
It swarms.
Hey goof
what kind of spoof are you
in your duck-billed running shoes
and your strategic hair do
trying to rap about poverty around my oil-drum
when your daddy’s a slumlord
that’s enslaved half the neighbourhood to the rent
and you’re the latest issue
of a rich man’s brat
laid like the egg of a wasp
on the forehead of a caterpillar
that could have been a butterfly
if your daddy hadn’t eaten her out of house and home
before she had a chance to bloom?
Do you feel like the guest with the most
after you’ve eaten the host
like a parasite?
Hey goof
what kind of spoof are you
to show up here
like a cross-dressing closet in disguise
among people huddled in Salvation Army overcoats
with their hands and feet to the fire
burning fashion magazines to stay warm?
All these people sleeping on cardboard
and you show up here
like a giddy girl at a pyjama party
with your embroidered pillow and your flying carpet
for a stay over with the homeless
to make yourself feel real
by living off their nightmare
to fulfill your dream of becoming a rap star
by forging your credentials
like counterfeiters in the spring
as if all this suffering
were just a fashion statement without the bling.
Hey goof
what kind of spoof are you
that you’ve got to resort to identity theft
by stealing from the little the poor have left?
Don’t you have one of your own
parked in a three car garage?
Don’t you have a mirror at home
that can lie to you like a girlfriend
who’s been sleeping around with your homies
like a credit card on a shopping spree?
Did you buy those holes in your jeans?
Were you wounded in a robbery at the foodbank
or did you wear them out
trying to make ends meet like a welfare mother
wondering how to feed her family on three magic beans?
Hey goof
what kind of spoof are you
acting as if you’ve had it as rough
growing up as an anti-hero with a safety net
like a high wire funambulist
pulling strings
whenever you took a fall
like a spider-web of uncut umbilical cords
as these in a snakepit of downed powerlines?
What did you come here for?
You just another national anthem
slumming with the theme-songs of the poor
as if you got a whiff of real life
humming along with a garbage-can?
I don’t like you man.
I don’t like the way
you attire yourself in the skins of your victims
and wear your logos as if they were prison tats
you could buy at any department store
instead of earning them?
And what are those?
Stick on scars
you got from a package of bubble gum
so can look tough on the cover of your album
like ten thousand other rap stars
from the wrong side of the zodiac in
Hey baby
maybe they’ll put your star
on the walk of fame in
right next to the bag lady sleeping
like the embryo of a voodoo doll on a heating grate
as if she were back in the womb again
and you can say you earned your name on the streets
like a false water mocassin
you fooled them into not treading on
by imitating the real thing
as if you had sting
not just the latest app for your cellphone.
It’s not cool to be a legend of light anymore
so what’s a prince of darkness like you doing
trying to pimp himself up like a constellation
that walks on water
and talks like fire
when you ought to be getting down
with the next generation of the deprived and the depraved
like a mugshot
a rose of blood
and a chalk outline
on the cemetery sidewalk
with its anonymous headstone
that leads to a grave nobody puts flowers on?
Hey goof
what kind of spoof are you
that you come on like the shining example
of a black hole to atavistic children
who envy your car rims
like steering wheels
that took their lives
into your own two hands
and drove like a golden chariot through the slums?
Hey goof
what’s a spoof like you
doing down here with your ear to the slang
trying to get the demotic patois of poverty down just right
like the language of people without a voice
who had to learn to talk to themselves
because you and your Daddy
and all the rest of your infestation
didn’t give them a choice?
And where’d you hire your girlfriend?
Rent-a-wreck?
She looks like a cross
between Billy Holiday
and Amy Winehouse
singing Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot
on the stern of the Titanic.
What’s she supposed to be?
Tinkerbelle on angel dust?
A talented trophy awarded a starlet
in a look-a-like contest
trying to elevate
the living conditions of the destitute
to the catwalks of the runway and the stage?
When has their ever not been an age
when the fashion plates of parasites like you
didn’t make a career out of human suffering
by imitating their symptoms like money?
Hey goof
what kind of spoof are you
that you hang around here
like the noose of a tapeworm
trying to come on like a bad executioner
when you know there’s nothing to eat but pain?
You’re not a head hunter.
You’re just someone
who likes to shrink the brains
of the underfed
while they’re still children.
You’ll do what your Daddy did for a living
because you were raised and bred to it.
You’ll sit down at Thanksgiving
and carve up the world
according to familial protocol
and thank the Lord for giving it to you
as if the food
you took out of a child’s mouth
were manna from heaven
for living the good life.
And you’ll say that you know
what it’s like to be down and out
because you’ve been there
and you’re an expert
but when an ad comes on tv
showing a child too numb with hunger
to brush the flies from her eyes
you’ll make a grand gesture
and pass on the custard.
Hey goof
what kind of spoof are you
who thinks he can stand around my oildrum
and warm his hands alongside the destitute
as if we all went to the same church
and heard the same sermon?
Do you really think those threads you’re wearing
make you bullet proof
or are you just looking for a few more holes
to make you look convincing?
PATRICK WHITE
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