Postcard Poverty

Aiming up and down
pointing high and low
Digital camera shooting up the ghetto
They want snapshot sadness for the slideshow
And to find it he's willing to go
Trenchtown by day, Cite Soleil by night
Down in the Beetham by the burst tire light
With a wide-angle lens to catch every sight
Before he has to rush
to catch his flight
Snap, snap, getting high off the gap
Between the have and the want, between the
need and lack
Between the dirt and decay and the world

waiting dey
At the end of his holiday

He's looking for postcard poverty
He did not pay so much to see
The same things he can see away

The things that he sees every day
He's looking for postcard poverty
A little change of scenery
He does not want to be the same

As the folks he knows away

Running up and down
looking to and fro
For the cantina seen on the travel show
Gives the barman an extra peso
Backdrop, group shot, 'cause he wants all to know
That he's down with the brothers in the barrio
He's down with the brothers and not just a gringo
With time to kill and money to spend
Come to slum down in the tenement
Because he feels he's one of a kind
A Vasco de Gama looking for the first time
At a land unknown to his homebound friends
That only he can explain to them
Beyond the walls, way off the beaten path
To find the wood mask that she's got to have
Finds the vendor, says she adores his craft
Then tries to get the man to cut his price in half
A war or words and then a deal is made
A dollar saved just to tell how brave
She was to bargain down an old man with a blade
To haggle like a native and then to get her way
Now the mask stares down from the wall
Mouth open wide to announce to all
How she once went down to the depths of hell
For a souvenir and a story to tell