I stood outside the concert where the violinists
were standing around with their instruments.
Mozart again, I missed it.
I stood across the road with a lump in my throat,
then I sat down & cried in my black raincoat.
It's being in the city that hurts, knowing that the concert
was on & that I couldn't afford it, but it's more than that.
It's window shopping for a year & then a decade.
It's knowing the futility of that stupid hope you had
& the cliché of staring into food halls from the outside.
I also walk into bookshops & CD megastores & browse.
Sometimes I wish that I didn't feel the need to read.
The educated working class are their own problem.
Society will lock the poor out.
But we hang around the cultural spots to remind them.
I feel like a git in the city & why should I?
Sometimes I think I would be better off hoping to win lotto
in my own suburb or in a factory,
what I don't know about my situation won't hurt me.