At the age of thirty-eight, I lived at
The edge of New York, having been pushed off
The island on which I’d been born by fat
Cats who never hesitated to scoff
At people pushed out of the neighborhoods
They had snapped up for gentrification.
Financially, we weren’t out of the woods
When the gentry planned their fornication
Of our city, I lived on a houseboat,
Five-hundred square feet for three people and
A dog and two cats. The gentry would gloat
Over what I had earned on a bandstand.
Now Junior Gordillo, aged thirty-eight,
A child of those greedy gentrifiers,
Brags about doing something really great
While leading a group of trendoid liars
Who promise to make others share the wealth
And to those born without money vouchsafe
A secure future with financial health.
Nice—but we all left when he was a waif.
Now who are the folks Gordillo will save?
Must be those paupers at the anarchist
Bookstore called Property Is Theft who rave
About his virtues, and only get pissed
When a journalist can be such a cad
To mention the two-thousand square foot house
That Daddy Gordillo bought for his lad.
In that crowd, this does not make him a louse
Or part of the capitalist syndrome,
Because one-point-five million bucks is not
“A particularly valuable home”
To a socialist who has also got
A sugar daddy, however high-flown.
As Billie Holliday famously sang—
Sweetly— “God bless the child that’s got his own,”
From Old New York we recall with a pang.
*****
Poet’s Note: Born to beatnik thespians in Greenwich Village, I struggled to play music for a living while raising my child in neighborhoods undergoing gentrification. This became ever harder, and eventually we left the city as monied investors from around the world made housing unaffordable for working families. Now that the children of those investors, safely ensconced in upscale housing provided by their progenitors, declare war on the system that made their lives possible, erstwhile New Yorkers hardly know if they should laugh or cry.
“At anarchist bookstore, news of NYC socialist leader’s $1.5M home met with a shrug” by Elizabeth Kim, Gothamist, 22 August 2026