...not enough to go around you say...
No food for the kids? Short on medicine, Mom in a rest home withering away? Teeth rotting for lack of proper dental care? Junk car won't start, no wood to keep warm this winter, threadbare cardboard socks, electric bill overdue, no this and no that and they ain't but one way out?
It's a tough world.
...and make no mistake about it: Your government (no matter where you live) doesn't give a shit. The scumbag politicians you've erroneously thought you elected to represent you (or had foisted on you by your demagogic leaders) do NOT care about you at all. Not selectman, senator, president nor king...
As proof may I offer (as if you need proof...your beleaguered lives all the proof you need I know) but:
According to World Priorities Inc., a Washington-based research organization (and admittedly I don't know who the hell they are either; they may be just as full of crap as the governments of the world) but anyway this outfit claims one of the reasons you had such a tough time last year is because the world spent $600 billion on weapons supporting 29 different wars around the globe so there wasn't a lot of money left over for social services.
And war deaths were the highest in 17 years with poor countries bearing the brunt of the burden (naturally, the poor have always been fodder for the cannons and canons of the aristocracy: the rich don't fight wars they just start them as a means of driving off their indolent spleens, a little diversion, something to while away their idle time when they're not out on the links) - as usual the impoverished were fueled and fooled along and armed by the industrialized nations, who should know better but don't.
The US,France and Great Britain are the largest suppliers of arms to the so-called Third World (read: black; at the moment in Somalia there are more land mines in the ground practically than there are blades of grass...) The only criteria for a shipment of bristling arms is luchre; right or wrong plays no role in it.("How much money did you say you have? Good, I'll trade you that for a six-pack of anti-personnel mines...")
So if you're living at or near poverty level, watch out, you are at risk, could be called up to defend what isn't even your's - you are anexpendable cipher in the configurations of the ruling class, but take heart: Here's how we beat the bastards at their own game!
Land mines in every golf course across the world all going off in one day of exploding tees and sand traps, fairways and 19th greens, would upset their handicaps & snuff the hierarchy in an afternoon...and good fucking riddance.
I loath the rich with a palpable hatred borne of the many frustrations endemic to being poor, but oddly, I am also dependent on them...all who are poor are, and that is why we tumble to the crap they pull on us: nowhere else to turn. We Shall Overcome! Don't give up hope, come together...but despite my idle threatening prattle we must be non-violent in our approach, difficult though that may be...Grrrrr...
IT LOOKED SAFE ENOUGH...
...but in Boston you can't always tell.
I eased that big heavy black door open and stepped out onto the street in front of 278 Commonwealth Ave., in those days the penultimate Back Bay address eclipsed only by Beacon Hill. Today's tony Newbury Street was then - 40 years ago when I was at my B & E peak - just a bunch of pharmacies, delis & dorms and here and there a fancy shop where you could spend 50 bucks for a tie if you were so inclined. I wasn't, didn't have fifty bucks if I was, and for sure it woulda gone into rotgut Narragansett beer before I would have thrown my filched loot at Brooks Brothers on a Burberry tie made from New Hebrides wool.
Comm Ave one of the numerous streets I roamed on the map of my early travels and travails, a street to match hands down San Francisco's North Beach Denver's East Colfax or Collins Avenue in Miami.
Other than the fact the apartment I was vacating was not mine and I was weighted down with about 21 stolen carats and a Rolex Oyster Perpetual, also not mine - until now anyway - I felt OK, ready to bolt and run like hell down the alleys if the heat showed or a scream suddenly erupted from the brownstone I just left...ease on down the street, make a right onto Exeter, cross Newbury, step up the pace but don't run, cross Boylston, make a left and head into the inner city up to Washington Street and into...
The Palace.
When a Massachusetts state crime commission did a study of crime in Boston, The Palace was featured in color on the cover and no friggin' wonder - you could get anything you wanted in it, or get rid of anything you had and to cover up your sins there was always a throbbing Blues band hard at work.
Place was full of pugs and thugs and cops, sailors hookers and pimps, and me. I wasn't a cop is all I can tell you and I wasn't as tough as I thought I was then or would have you believe I am now, o no, I was a kid from Vermont for Cris'sakes playing at being a city boy, tryin' to make a livin' off the second story heists. How I managed to live through that period in my life can only be written off to living by luck for as sure as I am 64 now, by rights I shoulda died at 20...or just be gettin' outta MCI Walpole, Cedar Junction now they call it, The Big House no matter what name you give it.
Living by luck!
Look, a Yankee punk run amok in Beantown eluding capture by moments, escaping to the Med aboard an aircraft carrier, turning up years later in Oakland, Berkeley, lost in California, Denver, Wyoming...outliving the statute of limitations and dodging the revenge of the aggrieved.
I leap for joy, shriek for joy, am ecs-fucking-static with joy at never having gotten caught and believe me when I tell you - I have cleaned up my sidewalk act...o yea verily Brothers & Sisters I am a virtual paragon of virtue these days...
Well, comparatively speaking I should maybe say. But like my Friend Mollie the bank robber says, `Always keep an air of mystery about yourself...'
No comments:
Post a Comment