I remember moving in to my old flat
Down in San Jose
It wasn’t much to look at
But it was all I could afford
I was studying a 6 day degree
Hoping it would get me somewhere
It was only dollar twenty five
In the rag
Because we all sometimes have to pray
For small mercies
I had just paid out for another hidden cost
Turns out there are a lot of them
When you haven’t got much money:
$13.02 to get my room key
Or the landlady hits me over the head with a baseball bat –
That’s how a democracy works, we elect a leader
And then they milk us for all we are worth.
A dictatorship works the same way –
Only they don’t bother with voting.
This hunny came up to me,
Lips that could devour a man
A body so voluptuous
It could make a man go insane.
“Excuse me, there’s no toilet roll in the cubicle.”
****, what small hells we make for each other
Even the cruellest of men should be able to wipe their ***.
At times of seeing such beauty
We become all gushing
And promise things that are simply beyond us,
In a hope of being rewarded with a mouthful of beauty
Or even better –
A bed.
So I went downstairs and had a near fatal run-in
With the Jamaican landlady
“You won’t be having no pieces of *** in your flat
I-s can be a-telling you that now!”
I returned with the toilet roll
She puckered her lips
Winked and said she would see to me tomorrow
So the next day I went round and said I had
A bit of ailing at the back of my throat
She turned her nose up and said:
“There’s nothing that could be done for me.”
And with that shut the door.
It is such a shame when such beauty gets prissy
But that is the human condition
The more generous you are
The less generous you can afford to be:
Just ask Timon of Athens.