Letter to the Bank Manager #89 (Art Rambles Poetic)

My dear Bullrider,

In efforts to penetrate your thick, tanned hide I’ll try anything. Art can change the world and will keep trying. Here I ramble poetic for your gain:

I stand here my severed head held high, grounded by circumstance, ready to occupy my space, resist ejection from a downtown park, surrounded by uncertainty, prepared to take the next step, side by side with my imagined friends. We have linked ourselves together, the chain fences behind us which stand with the respectable fronts of commerce. Their clothes are laundered only by the best, whitewashed by well paid cleaners who hang their heads slightly afraid to look you in the eyes, too delighted to have jobs once more, on the other side of the barricade. I-Pads and watch chains scoff given voice and thin personhood by the swagger of the model who wends down the aisle ready to marry a selfish dream to another reality. Protest signs sing off key, unified by discord, some loud and others meek, stumbling toward an articulation brewed, stewing toward fruition. Stumbling blocks are scattered by law to protect the public safety, a strange looking building that in general goes unnoticed. Tents and tarps are foreclosed on because bleaching time has come. Sanitized marble public see cardboard streets pulled down, communities dispersed for the common good of the comfortable. Safety concerns are overblown and don’t apply consistent. A park with drugs is given wide birth, and uptown thrives, ignored because few are strong or able, few have the fight, the courage, few can look in the dealers eye and say leave, say leave because the strong are nowhere to take up their cause. Out of sight, out of their minds because Europe isn’t helping the portfolio they staked their hollow souls upon. They’ve troubles of their own and need the distractions gone, that focus on equity when inequity is their role. The strugglers and the fighters are ready to drown out the shout of the mayor as he looks down from a mega-platform somehow smaller now. Proportion would seem, like rational thought, the place where opposites meet. We all see perspective only easy for some to draw and for others to distort.

I take a virtual stand on a shaky stage solid in my conviction that my messy arguments are as tidy as authority permits. My body weighed by black and whites dunked to the radio news sits safe with sound of smart conversation, panic, and looming clouds. Point by point an explanation is broken down to examine its component parts. Compliance is intolerable now. Some people have no choice but must resist the shelters and sleep in the slightly less dangerous parks. So many parks could do with a good clean to make them more sane for those who have no choice but to see them as their homes. I ask the mayor to continue good work begun and put resources into cleaning up all those neighborhoods falling into sad disrepair, suffering from poverty and daily loss. He is asked to hear the complaints of those on other streets where the anti-social behavior of the too well heeled reigns.

Hubris, Arrogance and Gall meander down the street drunk on champagne, arm in arm,and scoff at the filth, the dirt. The Dirty hold up a mirror so Hubris may straighten his tie and see his own pock marked visage.

I take my cake and, hat in hand, eat. Coffee thrills. The simple pleasures smile. The taste of cotton, of boiled leather, of dry wall, and grubs finally get their due.

Yours sincerely,


Art O’Connor