Yuppies You Are

by

Helen Symes

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Yuppies you are.
Out there in an office tower
Typing, talking or upward climbing
In a city with little soul.
There is no joie de vivre on the streets of the city's core
There is dirt and noise and poorly dressed people
Who stand on the main corner
Waiting for the bus.
They don't wear the clothes of Eaton's Fourth Floor.
They wear mismatched socks and down-at-the-heel shoes
And stretch pants washed too often
That ride up in front and show the ankle.
Violent clashes of colour and style
Early Salvation Army or handy thrift shop
Some of them are "druggies" and pan handlers
May I have a quarter? Thirty-five cents?
The rate just went up.
They hope for a dollar or more
Ready to tell you how the Welfare cheated them
How they need the money for a cup of coffee
Ready to tell a story I have no desire to hear.
I turn my head in irritation as they stand there.
Indian boys, white boys, crooked bodies or crooked souls.
I once gave a bus ticket to a widow who asked
She threw it away because it did not buy booze.
In the long ago forties and fifties, the street had life and fun.
The yuppies love the fifties now; as a new fashion trend
They wear vintage clothes of the twenties too
They say the fifties had sanity and tradition
And the eighties have none.
Maybe they are right and maybe they
In their Yuppiedom
Are the true "lost generation"
Measuring success by American Express, Master Card
And a taste for Molson's lager beer,
Soulless, aggressive, uncaring and unsmiling.
The busy generation
So busy being busy or telling people that
They have no time to cook or eat their food.
People say that they order it
From fast food restaurants at double the price of the store.
There is a new question
Says the Free Press.
How do we get custom-broiled steak hot to the door
So that the yuppies can save the ten-minute cooking time
And use it to relate, to interact, to exercise
And best of all, to tell each other how great and how yuppie they are
As they wait patiently for the delivery person?
I am an old, downwardly mobile person
Who is not impressed by it all.