Detract Housing

Dear Suburban Housewives: as you sip your gin and tonics
you’ll forgive me if I slip into a bout of histrionics.
I’ll keep housing – the low-income kind – and the resulting lack
of minorities from settling within your cul-de-sac.

The inner-city types say they won’t stand for this undue delay
but they can’t understand the joy that comes from eating crudités,
or luaus at the country club, or sipping some martinis,
or approval for a mortgage, which for whites comes with extreme ease.

Barack Obama had a program, offering some certain rights
to those with lesser incomes who wished they could be suburbanites.
But once that kind of person is afforded opportunities
the value of all real estate will sink in your community.

Another coded message – although not too tough to crack:
I am speaking to the white folks who feel they’re under attack.
They’ve worked hard to bring about their upper-middle-class prosperity
and thumb their nose at neighbors who endure income disparity.

The grandeur of the office I continue to diminish
as I desperately seek voters in a mad sprint toward the finish.
No appeal to better angels; it’s division I exploit.
My campaign for reelection in just one word: maladroit.