Pre Diction

Lionel Kearns
From:   By the Light of the Silvery McLune: Media Parables, Poems, Signs, Gestures, and Other Assaults on the Interface. Vancouver: Daylight Press, 1969.

Bent old men and women and dirty children scavenging
for scraps of paper to carry in immense bundles
on their backs for a few centavos.
They keep the streets clean.
They are also shining your shoes and polishing your sports car
and scrubbing out your toilet bowl.
They are puking in their piles of rags.
They are pawing through your garbage for something to eat.
They are so hungry they will do anything for a drink.
They are selling their sick sisters to tourists.
They are even pretending to smile.
And you are so used to seeing all this
that you hardly consider it anymore.
Or maybe it's because their skins are darker than yours
that you dismiss it as part of the natural order.
But listen to me, Fatty,
they are living and dying and waiting the slow wait of the desperate.
Degradation would finish them off it is wasn't for their hatred.
And there is a rumour that something is going to happen.
The police have begun searching for guns stored in the barrios.
(It has happened before in other places, you know)
And don't go putting me down as just another social protester,
because I'm not protesting.
I'm just telling you what's going on
So you won't be surprised when it happens.

Poem 1 | Poem 2 | Poem 3 | Poem 4 | Poem 5 | Poem 6

Lionel Kearns's works copyright © to the author.