'Of People and Parasites'

There we were, promenading along The Bund.
And there he was alongside me, crouching, hopping,
squirting white sticky stuff over my boots,
attempting a wipe-steady action
while my heels accelerated.
Chuckling, I fled the scene by taxi,
comforting my distressed leather with a Kleenex.

But -
any vestigial humour was outgunned by a bare-knuckle economic imperative.
Here was no entrepreneur, farmer, builder or teacher;
but his needs were no less vital in that vacuum of outgoing -
rent, healthcare, education and nourishment.
His dreams of a better future encapsulated
within a solitary tube of liquid shoe polish,

clinging to me, my revenue potential, to hope itself,
the last rung on the ladder before falling into -
well, what is lower than this?

But lower than a cockroach,
as only the self-satisfied and self-obsessed are,
I shrugged him off like a fly.


Wondering why, The Bund, Shanghai, January 2007