Billionaire’s Walk

By Christopher Bernard


Ah yes, we love it here - who wouldn’t
like to sleep in a ragged tent
dropped like an empty sausage casing
abandoned on dirty cement?
The killing machine of the marketplace
has put us in this place.
One of us wrote down this song
for those of us who refuse to belong.
He’s long gone now, but he had style;
he wore his home in his pocket comb,
and knew how to laugh
at a world that did not love him.

“Be not typical. Be rare.
Be not thin or fat.
Stow your worries with your care.
Take not this or that
for whatever’s less than you know what
you’re owed, be it pennies in your hat.
Let the hoi-polloi know that.
Flaunt your rags, and know what’s what,
but walk like a billionaire!

“Take your time. Be debonair.
The sun’s your flash well lit.
Nobless oblige invites your share.
Your throne’s where’ere you sit.
Whatever speed you turn your wit,
a gentleman you are. Why, it
is never clearer than when you’re fit
and walk like a billionaire!

“Be gracious to the folk who stare.
The tourists are so sweet!
Allow them to donate their fare:
they owe you that one treat.
You’re part of the local color, neat.
You lounge and loll about the street.
You’re boom plucked from a bust defeat,
and walk like a billionaire!

“And when you’ve had at last your share,
are happy as a dog,
and everything looks fair and square,
and you’re like a bump on a log,
serene and creamed and soft as a bog,
you’ll puff your butts with a chink and a jog,
and live by your wits between Gog and Magog.
Who cares if you sleep in the gutter? By God,
you walk like a billionaire!”


Dedicated to the homeless in the richest 
nation on earth

_____

Christopher Bernard’s collection of poems, The Socialist’s Garden of Verses, won a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence and was named one of the “Top Indie Books of 2021” by Kirkus Reviews.