Pictures from Atlantic City

Candy coloured Wild West façade

beautifully designed for today, for that

feeling of wonder at what went before.

A far cry from how I was.

In my wildest dreams, I have never imagined

buildings of a Wild West town so clean and colourful.

Deception seems a pre-requisite to this place.

Casino after casino all vying

to seduce any one to part with those well earned

dollars. Row upon row of gaudy lit slot machines

fed with dreams of a

quick fix for financial dilemmas, not realising

the casino owners’ scorn.

Only a very few will hear

and see the shinning lights and tinkling bells as

the jackpot falls.

The lights and the glitz continue to seduce fools

into gaming rooms, seeking to part them from both

their dignity and their cash. Succeeding so well,

on a card or a dice. The house remains laughing

as the number of losers grows.

The majestic boardwalk, 80 feet wide and 3 miles long,

is peppered with shops, eateries –

funnel cake to snowballs, to a three, four or five

course meal, hot dogs to seafood, all demanding attention.

The board walk rickshaw carriers all competing

for trade, to carry bodies up and down the charade!

Tacky shops compete for trade, everything

cheap and foreign made. Clothing in every spectrum

of colour – beautiful Indian dresses, I could buy so many

but I refrain, they are not fair trade,I imagine the sweat shops

and I still need to de-clutter my home, ready for my new life

to begin.

Small blue buses run continually around the city,

between casinos, at each the driver calls out, ‘Taj Mahal’

‘Resorts’ ‘Trumps’ ‘Tropicana’, just to name a few.

The standard price of $2.25 wherever you go, nobody

standing to ride, all must sit.

Open your eyes as you ride, through the back streets,

the poor neighbourhoods,

see clearly the disparity between the two.

Those who have so little, to those risking all at the casino.

It appears to me that this modern gaming city has grown

up amongst the poor, in its own way helping by

providing construction jobs for the willing;

but I wonder, does it take more than it gives?

I believe the answer is yes, it feeds the poverty

by its greed.

The ocean to the left of the boardwalk, a huge expanse

of warm coastal Atlantic, breaking onto white sands,

must see its share of the hopeless, helpless suicides...

 

Baltimore 2009

Jean A Isherwood Farley