did you know
if you earn $34k a year or more
you're in the top 1% of all the world

if that's the joke then
where's the punch-line
did i miss it somewhere
in the attempt to justify
political suicide

how could that appease
those of us groveling on our knees
living hand-to-mouth
from paycheck to paycheck
as the world's 80 richest billionaires
who control 50% of the world's wealth
do whatever they **** well please

by all means
fact check me if you don't trust my
ridiculously overpriced master's degree
in literary cultural and textual studies
because let's face it
we've all heard the jokes
an English diploma means jack-****
in this morally bankrupt economy
where literacy is literally repressed as a
way of keeping the downtrodden oppressed

a healthy discussion where we ask
critical questions is the natural synthesis
of any democratic debate and
challenging each other is a stellar
way to cultivate the intellectually irate but
let's not divide and instigate after all
unnecessary altercations over
trivial factoids only distract
us from the realists' explanation

we are ******
the world is burning all around us
200 species perish every single day
as we exorcise fossil fuels
and melt the polar ice caps
pumping oil into gas-guzzling SUVs
and CO2 into the air we share as

we poison the wellsprings of hope
with idiosyncratic politicians
who force idiotic semantics
down our throats until
we choke and splutter and mutter
beneath our breath about
how things used to be and how
we'd be happier if we just followed
passively like gentle sheep adhering to
the edicts and decrees of the
corporocratic oligarchy

see
i'm not standing here defaming
or complaining on the contrary
i'm stalwart in proclaiming that
if we don't pause to consider
the way we're fanning
the flames razing this
planet we will no longer
have a globe to call our home

with all due respect
there's no chance in hell
that i'll just sit back and laugh
while the Empire grows and
consumes life liberty and happiness

gorging itself on the apathy of
the well-adjusted privileged white kids
who don't blink twice at the
homeless transgender teenager
hiding out on the stoop of a
fair-trade coffee house to avoid
the Florida rain or the corpse
of a drowned emaciated Syrian toddler
buried face-down in the sand
or the arrest of Sandra Bland for
failing to use a
turn signal or put
out her cigarette
tell me how such
a mundane gesture of
defiance could warrant
the admonishment that
tied a noose around her neck

the 1% is not a people group
it is an idea nurtured at the behest
of capitalist demagogues
that inundate our culture with
fantasies of American exceptionalism
let's face it the only thing exceptional
about this lackluster nation
is the fact that we have the world's
largest prison population per capita
due in no small part
to vindictive laws that target
the poor and clap them in chains

it isn't Us vs. Them
that is the nefarious toxin that
brainwashes and destroys
community and philanthropy
if we would truly call ourselves
lovers of humanity than we must
muster the humility to admit that
we all have certain degrees
of light and dark
each of us on a spectrum
oscillating in stark contrast

it is We the People vs. the State
that three-tiered hydra that
guards the estates of the elite
and leaves others starving out
in the streets
a system predicated on
setting the classes against themselves
a self-perpetuating leviathan
looming god-like overhead
nurtured by the treatises of
outdated 18th century philosophers

the social contract is a lie
i didn't sign my life away
on some dotted line
so that my freedom and
independence could be usurped
by the stupendous guise of
capitalism masquerading as
the harbinger of harmony

we're not demanding economic
equality but fiscal equity
a concept that each man
and woman and child can
live and love in
comfort and in health and
worry not for the future
generations because a system
of slavery no longer exists
to inundate their lives
with shallow labor
'till they perish

if we sit idly and watch our
culture continue to chortle and
spiral into the idolatry of political celebrity
we may forget that the people
have the capacity to
reclaim our stolen dignity
hoarded by the specter of power

Foucault once wrote that dominance
cultivates resistance and i am the
expression of that latter people's movement
one aspect of an anthemic chorus
singing in unilateral unison as
the glass castles of the State come crashing down

equal to each and every sister
brother to seven billion
rebel with a cause
now
tell me
will you join
your voice with ours
'cause trust me we need
all the help that we can get