POETIC INJUSTICE - ’Twas the night before Christmas
And here on the street
Rats rustle through trash
Looking for something to eat
A whisper of smoke
A hint of rain
Underpass drug deal
Lives flushed down the drain
Beyond the freeway
Sirens moan
Another tragedy
Not my own
A girl sells her body
She knows it’s not right
But more than the money
She seeks affection tonight
The cockroaches scatter
As someone turns on a light
A man off his meds
Howls into the night
Neighbors stand round a fire
In a steel drum
A far cry from what Santa
Would deign to come from
Drunken voices
Yell from a car
“You’ll never be better
Than the shit you all are”
Something breaks in my heart
Because I know they are right
As their car peels away
Into the night
In the tent one over
A little child screams
Her mother murmurs softly
Dispelling bad dreams
On the street it’s so easy
To give into despair
No hope that St. Nicholas
Soon will be there
The children now sleep
But come Christmas morn
There’ll be no new and sparkly
Just the old and the torn
In the shadow of the freeway
No, it’s not a good night
Handouts don’t help
If you don’t have a home
LA has housing a’plenty
But not the political will
To give our homeless neighbors
A real Christmas thrill
A place to call home
(Liz Amsden is an activist from Northeast Los Angeles with opinions on much of what goes on in our lives. She has written extensively on the City's budget and services as well as her many other interests and passions. In her real life she works on budgets for film and television where fiction can rarely be as strange as the truth of living in today's world.)
