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By Carol W. LaGrasse |
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March 30, 2005 |
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Here’s to houses needing paint, |
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Property value, that they ain’t. |
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Let’s see junk on lawns and drives |
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Topless bars and other dives, |
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Yards with weeds, rusting cars, |
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Aimless teens outside of bars. |
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Nothing new except the tasteless, |
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Pink flamingos, anything graceless, |
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Funky flowerpots cut from tires, |
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Drums of garbage feeding fires, |
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Gravel pits and asphalt plants, |
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Ugliness causing environmentalist rants. |
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No quaint little towns with touristy sites, |
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No millionaires’ houses with prices that bite, |
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No Victorian mansions with white picket fences, |
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No open mown pastures and wayside attractions. |
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We don’t want tourists, don’t want buyers, |
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Or higher taxes that come with outsiders |
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Let’s remove what’s entrancing |
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And resist what’s enhancing. |
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Our hometowns are beckoning, |
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Our life they are threatening. |
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We don’t want value, don’t want zoning, |
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Or any amenities suiting those that are roaming. |
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Cars, keep rusting, scare the rich away. |
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Lawns, stay weedy, keep buyers at bay. |
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Roofs lean in and windows crack, |
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Heaps of manure, waft scents from out back. |
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Threadbare couches, grace our porches, |
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Burning rubbish, make nighttime torches. |
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All things tacky, bless our spaces |
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Causing travelers dour faces, |
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So our life will reach the future |
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Without émigrés engulfing our culture. |
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May we see them slam car doors, |
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May we hear their exiting roars. |
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May our lives in peace continue, — |
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Junk, and freedom, muscle and sinew. |
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May our children grow up well |
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On the streets and byways where we dwell, |
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And live on in their kid’s kids, |
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While years go by, in their ancestor’s midst. |
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And die here with lives unmarred, |
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Buried finally in our town graveyard, |
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Their spirits gathered to the Father all seeing, |
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Who cares for them ever, the infinite Being. |
