PRIVELEGED ORPHAN

The Priveleged lives not in squaller

Among the common garbage whores bore

After their useless moment of ecstacy,

Not where the streets fill with

The human kindlings for disease,

Not where miasmas of the rotting filth stain the air:

Scraps of tablescraps unconsumed,

Clothes wearable only to the centennial-rotted dead

And other such unmentionables.

The Priveleged lives not in the pages

Of a Swift manuscript which condemned

Criminals can read and weep at,

Where charity lives in the minds of the giver

And blind eyes in the mind of the taker,

Where pittance is the way of the living

And pride is the way of the dead.

The Priveleged is an orphan

Living in a palace others deem Heaven

Yet raised by the adoptive parents:

Mother Decadence and Father Greed.

A single stab at regaining standard order

Ends in rejection, and the influence

Of the endless wealth resurrects

This Phoenix as a moral corpse.