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| Grenfell Tower before the fire. Image source: Blueprint Printing. |
I pasted aluminium and sparked diamonds
upon a crow of dirty concrete slabs
my followers know
I made their sight beautiful;
inside cockroaches leaped and prayed in their ways,
darkness, as they had their dirty sex, and bred
their roach mothers scrawl-scrubbed their children
clean of
black, darker skins
make them whiter white, right for our times
those scum dislike water
and won’t buy expensive organic food.
I hand pick cereal flowers for my kids
kiss them in milk hand-picked cows
glower them in precious Branded clothes
I drive a Bugatti, and always will.
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| Tenants in [Jared] Kushner’s East Village buildings . . . have often complained about lack of services. In April, residents of 118 East 4th Street, after five months spent with a garbage mountain in their backyard and with no cooking gas, won a court settlement in which [Kushner’s management company] Westminster agreed to make repairs, give rent-stabilized tenants 60 percent off their rent for the time without gas and market-rate tenants 30 percent off, and cover the tenants’ legal fees. —The Village Voice, January 12, 2017 |
Author’s note: As of today, 30 June 2017, one hundred and twenty-five tower blocks in the UK have failed fire-safety tests. Many thousands of the poor have been living in fire-hazards. Without knowing. The only thing keeping them safe is the lack of chip-pan fires, failed appliances. The state has left them vulnerable, hopeless and afraid. Anger is growing.
David Susswein writes from the bottom of England, close to the sea. He writes only to talk and communicate; to others he has never seen. Ramblings, such as above, can be found at Envoi, DreamCatcher, Picarroon Poetry, Morphrog.com, TuckMagazine, and others.