Preface |
I was on the balcony of a dingy bar one evening and overheard a girl say the words 'downstairs people'. It may be that she was simply referring to the people on the street below us, or that she had birthed a divinely diverse contronym.
I staggered over to her table, like one of the biblical Magi who pre-drank on camelback all the way to Nazareth, and commended her creation. I asked if I may use the mystifying term. She agreed and I typed and saved the word(s) into my digital Notebook.
Thanks

DOWNSTAIRS PEOPLE

"Those poor Hebrew downstairs people on the river bank -
the flood came and washed away
their entire livelihood in a single day"
said Pharaoh, being fed grapes
while a second slave fanned a palm leaf to his face.

"I pity the downstairs people who will never see the top of the sky
as I do flying high in the heavens with
my wings forged of feathers" said
the courageous, ambitious mighty Icarus
as he touch the sun before he sunk.

"Commoners and peasants those downstairs people
with inferior blood and cesspool gene pools
akin to slaves of yesterday's glory days"
said the sibling king and queen in their fancy dress,
jewels and their crowns and all of the golden rest.

"Those slutty downstairs people with their
gardens and their swimming pools;
I wish I could splash all over them too"
said the third floor pervert in hot-and-bothered envy
watching the scantily clad figures splashing in ecstasy.

"We hate being downstairs people,
sardines in cubicles without air-conditioning
or views of the Manhattan skyline"
said the paper-pushers on Tuesday morning,
eleven September two thousand and one.