What we want, what we get

Giving the prompt a go for dverse.

The image is one I borrowed a while ago from Paul Militaru. Thank you, Paul, I’m giving it another outing.

What we want, what we get

We can’t all live in fast city sprawl
where people sleep on cardboard
outside shops that guard their doors
because security theft and the poor stink

and we can’t all walk the midnight streets
the midnight that lasts all night till dawn
in the squalor of drugs and sharp-eyed thugs
and all the dead-eyed do for drugs

and we don’t all like the lights
that never blink or the stink of drink
from every open door, or the piss
that hits you every corner next to every bar

we don’t all want to live where
old ones daren’t go out when sun has set
and young ones can’t go home at all
among stray cats and dogs that cringe
behind the bins, the misery of it all.

Some of us live low in the slow lane
where people take their poverty indoors
the bars close early and streets are dead
where there are no doctors so don’t get sick
and all the shops are boarded up
and there are no lights at night.

But there are no lights at night
and we can see the stars.