The scales tip one way or the other

Hot summer in the city, walking
the streets to find a room
to rent: thinking the signs
on gates and windows spoke
a straightforward honesty
until inspection yielded
the crumbling insides, close
quarters, latrines with slats
on walls and open stalls,
the total lack of privacy.

Look what money can buy,
my father would say as we drove
past summer homes of the rich
and mostly absent from our hometown.
How do they make their money, I
wanted to know; how did their children,
who sat in the same schoolrooms as I,
never seem to worry or care about
anything? —not grades, not where
to sleep or eat; certainly not the future.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Riot.

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