Bilked

Like the time I awoke to find my privacy fence
tagged with all manners of graffiti: stars
and crowns, profanity and whatnot. Not being
someone with a power sprayer nor someone
who knows how to use one, but being
someone who had seen his neighbor Steve
power-spray the mold off his house,
I knocked on Steve’s clean door.

“No, Dad’s not at home, but for twenty dollars,
I can do it,” said Steve’s teenage son Tripp.
I paid him. Thirty minutes later, water pounding,
I checked on Tripp—or rather my fence, which,
between two crowns read T-R-I-P-P.
No, I hadn’t seen his name earlier. And yes,
the vandals meant to tag his house. “Probably
because I punched a kid at school,” Tripp said.

To sum up, I paid Tripp for damages he had caused,
much like we will be doing, only
to the tune of more than 200,000 dollars
in annual pension, plus secret service,
a small staff, and unlimited postage. So,
I should not complain about twenty dollars
and a high water bill. And as for my clean fence,
it does not divide a nation into two.

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This post is republished on Medium.

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