A girl, twelve,
requires a night nurse,
Two-hundred
doctor appointments annually
I have
had six surgeries and estimate thirteen more
Before I
hopefully reach twenty-five
Who pays
for me?
A boy
seventeen, left high school at fourteen
Juvenile
detention, minimum wage is trumped
By a
tec-nine and white powder
Economic
rum-runner, 1920’s prohibition hustler
A mirror
of me shot me
Who
teaches him that he is me?
A mother,
forty, instructs a class of thirty-six
In a
classroom of scanned sheets, a rotten roof
Graffiti
bathrooms with no toilet paper
Because
it will just get dunked
The
spectrum of intelligence quotients in my charge
Ranges
from seventy-two to one hundred and twenty
Parents
often do not respect what I do
Or the
path to college, because it is foreign to their nomenclature
I am
tenured, complacent and surrendered to the system by year eight
How do
you inspire me?
A father,
fifty-six, bought a company, that bought a company
That was
bought by a company and is now retired
The
proceeds of years of work are dissipated into a package consolidated
Into the
slimming recipe of humans required to bake a commensurate profit
Technology
has framed a debate; if I can save money by lowering my costs
Using
less people and sustain as an industry
Who keeps
the difference?
A man,
forty-six, worked twenty years in a factory
Replaced
along with six coworkers by a man monitoring a system of robots
Compelled
by a chip; trained to be a dinosaur
Too young
to retire, wrinkled and fear-filled
That the
world is a manipulation of the cerebral over the manual
What do I
do with my hands?
A boy,
twenty-three, studied for four years is sixty-thousand in debt
To a
combination of federal and private loans commencing a parade of interest
That will
carry into my forties, I have searched for work in my field for two years
And am
now employed at Best Buy, under the understanding that brick and mortar
Will be
felled by amazon and overstock before my loans are repaid
Where do
I fulfill my purpose?
A
preacher sixty-three, collects tithes in buckets at services
Promising
burdens and bounty from a book written by men
Who
claimed to know the men who could not read
I spend
non-taxable cash streams on stadium seating
And a
satellite feed to become schedule B itemized deductions
Is that
building worth borrowing from China?
Who
limits my definition of allowable expenditures?
A son,
eighteen, dead in Iraq blown to freedom
Mourned
by a brother, my captain, twenty-five same company
Who saw
me die, with his student loans paid, degreed
To stand on
am amputated leg alongside
For every
one of me, there are ten on the other side
Non-enlisted
sand-people like a movie
How do we
know when we are safe?
A man
fifty-seven, runs for office promises to cut taxes,
Keep all
the programs that everyone likes, is pro-this and that
Cut
spending on unspecified items, criticizes his opponent for specificity
Then
acknowledges that in the future a magical ticket will
Pay for
the girl’s night nurse
Pay for
the battalion of police to find a boy’s murderer
Pay for
great teachers
Reduce a
retired millionaire’s taxes
Find a
job for humans amongst the robots
Have a
boy’s parents pay off his college loans
Pay for a
new bomber over post-traumatic stress disorder
Oh the
Eucharist of debate; the bounty of algebraic unknown variables
Math in
formulas that supposedly balance, but neither acknowledge or
Confront
the anomalies of the present like brushed waters to drown the future
What of
us?
No comments:
Post a Comment