A smudge of poverty marks an oilskin cloth that rides up the tables on the gravy train and
but for the stain we'd all forget that some live life offset against the rim and only look but can't get in.

I challenge riches to a duel, a fool I am
I am the richest man I know and yet that smudge of poverty haunts me,
undaunted though and still I am the richest man I know.
If third class was any class at all
If going steerage entitled me to some armchair peerage then I am a Lord, a master,
I survey and sight the disaster that looms ahead.
But just a smudge and the stain well fed by droppings from the chieftains jowls,
the gravy train howls through the night
and a bare light behind me marks my passing.