You know I can't decide if I'm a rich-boy or poor but I'd like to have my answer ready when they knock upon my door and they give me the what-for and they drag me down to the station and they tell me all about that great nation that they're building under God. They tell me if I join on in I can share in some of that wealth. But how can I make that decision if I'm wondering to myself, baby am I a rich-boy or am I poor?

Every day I read the newspaper, take it for what it's worth. I try to leave behind the question of better off or worse. I take it all as education, learnin' about this bountiful nation that forgets the kids and eats the poor while Robin Hood she sleeps on the floor. Well the line is drawn, the curse is cast. My flag is flying at half-mast. My education costs a dollar a day but what's it worth if all I have to say is Its all a mess but if you want to write you're gonna have to find that address for yourself?

I ride the bus with paper and pen looking for a metaphor, but each day arriving downtown there's little written when I walk out the door to dirty streets and peeing in beer bottles and frozen hands and uncooked meats. There's a story about breakfast and lunch and dinner but really its not much of a tale. At home there's an artist, a painter, a poet -- he loves his work but he's much too frail. Pining away on love lost for a few who marveled for a while at his head and his hands but who slowly awayed like the colours do fade from his paintings of long-ago lands.

written by Christopher Monti
© 2002 Christopher Monti/BMI