street cleaner

street cleaner

The Street Cleaner

He is not a lucky man, but he is happy but one day he won on
a lottery ticket,

not a not a big sum of money but enough to by wheelbarrow
got permission

from the local council to keep the town`s streets
clean.  Happy, telling himself

 he was self- employed
and could sleep till nine in the morn  if
he wanted to.

A busy bee a busy bee he was till he collided with Mercedes
was taken to court

and his wheelbarrow was confiscated to pay for the damage.
He had a bike and

got a local garage to put a two- wheel contraption to fasten
to his bike, the town

got rid of its trash again until an officious policeman
asked him if he had a licence

for this he didn`t and it was confiscated. Now he had a jute
sack slung on his proud

shoulders and a walking stick with a nail attached, a weapon
a police officer said

  he was carrying a
weapon in public and he was prosecuted. 
He didn`t show up

to the hearing and when the law came around, he hung from a
rafter sometimes

 even serious
optimists give up and with no cleaner the town sank into misery,

plagued by vermin the population fled, a town given into paper
napkins pizza boxes

and burger wrappers and the poor who had nowhere to go. And
if this reflects

the life of a typical inner city of our English speaking
world it is purely incidental.