STORY OF A SLUM

Wrecking crews in denim blues rip slums up by their roots.
Others plant the project seeds to fill the beggars boots.
This is the patent process of a city's life and death.
New life is born to barren earth as ancients gasp for breath.
The brick and mortar monsters fall bewildered to the ground.
Through the canyons of the city the painful sounds abound.
The orchestrated efforts of crews of muscled men,
Rip out the guts of ghettoes just to build them up again.
And like the rodent residents of ships that sink at sea.
Scum who teem in tenements ooze from the heaped debris.
Trucks, like farting behemoths, squat near the dead remains.
Like about in disarray like scattered human brains.
A crew of swarthy swearing men wearing frozen scowls,
Pile mounds of excrement from constipated bowels.
The grime of grubby living disappears from sight
Into a grave-like dumping ground of manufactured blight.
All slums are born of poverty, depravity and sin.
They slam the door on decency, welcome evil in.
The pressured life of people poor and hungry all the time,
Induce despair and desperation, cruelty and crime.
Buildings jammed together, no breathing space between,
Deny the eye to see the sky and fields of flowing green.
And like dented garbage cans where rats and maggots play,
The human logs of lethargy sleep late on Judgment Day.
What a ray of sunshine, a breath of country air,
A decent wage, a place to play, a happiness to share,
Might mean to human herds who sleep within these walls,
And move about like cattle in overcrowded stalls.
In cities everywhere stand poor souls in the street
Cringing, cowering, crying, accepting sure defeat.
Like all the helpless millions who have no right to choose
Skeletons in rotting flesh await the wrecking crews.