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 [ VOICES ](https://mail.citywatchla.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=375)

#  On the Streets of LA

 POETIC INJUSTICE - ’Twas the night before Christmas

Written by Liz Amsden.

December 20 2021

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 POETIC INJUSTICE - ’Twas the night before Christmas

And here on the street

Rats rustle through trash

Looking for something to eat

A whisper of smoke

A hint of rain

Underpass drug deal

Lives flushed down the drain

Beyond the freeway

Sirens moan

Another tragedy

Not my own

A girl sells her body

She knows it’s not right

But more than the money

She seeks affection tonight

The cockroaches scatter

As someone turns on a light

A man off his meds

Howls into the night

Neighbors stand round a fire

In a steel drum

A far cry from what Santa

Would deign to come from

Drunken voices

Yell from a car

“You’ll never be better

Than the shit you all are”

Something breaks in my heart

Because I know they are right

As their car peels away

Into the night

In the tent one over

A little child screams

Her mother murmurs softly

Dispelling bad dreams

On the street it’s so easy

To give into despair

No hope that St. Nicholas

Soon will be there

The children now sleep

But come Christmas morn

There’ll be no new and sparkly

Just the old and the torn

In the shadow of the freeway

No, it’s not a good night

Handouts don’t help

If you don’t have a home

LA has housing a’plenty

But not the political will

To give our homeless neighbors

A real Christmas thrill

A place to call home

*(Liz Amsden is an activist from Northeast Los Angeles with opinions on much of what goes on in our lives. She has written extensively on the City's budget and services as well as her many other interests and passions. In her real life she works on budgets for film and television where fiction can rarely be as strange as the truth of living in today's world.)*

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