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Sam Bowden Mar 2014
If corporate Dems tell me about how 'We all do better when we all do better'...
Or about how 'It's not about class, it's about coming out for Dems'...
Or about how, 'No one identifies with the working class' or 'nobody wants to identify with the working poor'...
I say to you, WE ARE THE WORKING POOR.
Look at the stains on their clothes, listen to their words, look at the rugged callous of their hands, who amongst us can last a job loss, or wage cut, or a car blow out?
None of us, cept the 1%.
We are the precariat class, the proletarian class.
I say to you, the working poor and homeless are the 'emarginati', the literal marginal ones, the ones at the edges of society.
But who, honestly, isn't at the edge???
The Democratic gubernatorial candidate turned carpet-bagging Congressional goon, Bank of America executive turned-state-CFO Alex Sink embodies the centrist-right neoliberal dogma of 'business-rules', who cares about immigrants besides those who 'clean our hotels and do our landscaping'.
Brand-imaging, quaffed corporate Dems are why the two-party system in broken.
Both parties are sell-outs to capital, and they think we don't know.
We know, and we remember.
Neoliberal capitalism of 'Washington Consensus' imposed on the rest of humanity will fall.
I just hope we wise up as a republic in the mean time.
I'm taking an elevator to the
top of a building full of
people who don't care to know my name.

And on the way up,
my mom calls me and asks me
"Where are you?"
and I have to tell her
"I don't know,"
because nobody actually told me
on the way in, and I'm alone,
and the elevator isn't moving,
and my bank account isn't moving,
and now that I'm home
(which I'm not,)
((which I am,))
I can't figure out how to move my feet,
and so my legs aren't moving,
and my arms aren't moving,
and my head isn't moving.

And basically, I'm not going to
dance for these corporations,
so they're not going to dance for me
until I'm back on an elevator, singing
"Hey there, Delilah.
How's it feel to be exploited?"

But that's okay, because despite
my arms, legs, feet, bank account,
and this elevator,
my heart is moving.
And the continents are moving,
and this planet is moving,
and there isn't a CFO on Easy Street
who knows how to slow us down.
Ken Pepiton Feb 2022
2022 2:04

the VA Webex conference
future, bogus billable hours, a job,
and something to use old sad men for,

measuring, me re assuring, my more
aggressive conserver of self-will,
trained to lead, since learning to read, DID
that not occur, in each boy's life

dread of the cobalt bomb,
constancy of light speed and pituitary assisted
thought speed,
pinging pong responding, thinking we may
think
along similar lines, so, I
decided,

to find a reason to bring to any reasonings,
I recross, as many of my first reasons
are in a framed loom, with four corners,

that bronze on the map coordinates,
marks nothing, four lines dividing states,
grants given the takers and tamers of the land,

whose sons have gone on to inherit this wind.
Imagine that.
Millions of letters aligned in code to readers
of ascii nada mas this exists in a series of events

solid backups, foolproof, we say CFO proof,
in the pre-Y2K IT game, geek veteran deaf,
high-demand HR,

so much so, mucho mucho, skip the queue
step right up
look achew

gotta tale or a story, is that your's that
you're eating?

Oh, my camera is still on I'm talking to me,
in my perifery
a mete-able bit of time delay,

the in, the way, das sein, dime a time

slip on through, think we may
as well
as any, I'd agree, and off we'd go

wild blue yonder, but that,
was no longer than this two weeks,

less, far less, threaded through now,
the real me in this chair,

in the back ground, one of the service's
perks, choose from these the background,
set and setting, photo director's call

Art's call, talent is a tool, shut up,
Intuit, tweak. Test… fo' won't you shut up see

that's me. On TV, in my easy chair,
on a Federally mandated budgeted service,
to me, that allows me eight easy
pseudo-greenscreens sets, one,
defaulted to my subconscious profile,
I'll assume,
that's me. On TV, in my easy chair,
rocking in floor lit wonder in front of
Gobekli Tepi,

and nobody says a word.
Convergence foreseen in the nineties,
has occurred,
much of this sub-mit-sci-o-usly con meat
mind excuses for war,

well, long ago, it became this game,
few lived so long as to need to know
the patience going gives a slow belly
and a liar.

Dancing at the door of the iliad within,
feel free to think, that me.

The camera is on, in text, seeing me
seeing me glance down, my fingers,
pointing from the mirror, not in the mirror

my face me face, same effect, not mirrored
neurons, my neurons, feeding back

way too late to care, no coda queue for me
that is no monkey in that mirror, that is me.

Tvme offers me his right as I offer mine,
omagod that's me. On TV, in my easy chair,

this never gets old, this phase on one of these
fridays, I can do one of these groups.
with some pretty sad sacks, when seen on TV,
I fit right in, with
Gobekli Tepi, floorlit, pre-roof

Real as can be imagined, this world
common old men, commonly share
live talking head time, everybit as
trustworthy as Kronkite spelled with a c.

The c at the center of we in time where u
find sounds form some things that seem ok
if a crow caw does mean something, only that
I heard you, ok, did you hear me I don't know.

That may be life's most enjoyable time
for any idle thought poured into a word,
there, breathe, you have it, I read, read
I said, I can.

I can tell you, partly, how I came to know
I can read:

We lived behind the courthouse
with the machine gun from world war one
and absolutely olympish champs from
army navy and marines, over there
over there,
across my street, is the lawn I play on,
over there,
over there, is the jail for drunk injuns
over there is where I learned the audience

reaction to a Hualapai child, being
evangelized, he was in a mob of snot nose,
rez kids, in the nineties, eh, think about it,

this kid in the crowd looks at me,
and my stunningly ebullient zealous wife,
he says,
my grandpa has never been in jail,
and I think
my grandkids won't be proud of that.

And I'm kinda proud to think of that,
as a test, love your neighbor as clause…

that part you work out, some days amaze,
some days,
right back in the maze,
picking up fragments of prayers we made
effective,

sort of, means, sorting idle words for worth,
is what sorting any thing is for, what it's worth,
or what its worth, that difference,

a breath equivalent,' force of mind to think,
after one another then and now, the
whole life on earth is better 2020 wide,

on the layer where nothing we learn is new,
we passed that so long ago in terms of
jellotime and bulletspeed and thought
godspeed in biblical time

using the stacking of the stories for effect,
the honor to the scribes taken from the brite
sons of the weavers and spinners of yarns,
tenders of tavern, need not apply,

ah, but when the Hans were in, we could test,
life was to be examined, prepare to enter

the gate, and wait for results,
life is that test, still
smallest yes voice says.
They -
The Wolves of Wall Street
Wanted me to shine
Their shoes;
Wingtips, loafers and pumps
Dumped in a clear plastic bag
During lunch-break

Me,
The temp from Ghana;
Me,
The HBCU fast-tracker
With a college visa
And a massive crush
On Vanessa;

Before the scandal

Me,
The coffee-hued
Marketing Mgmt major
Schlepping
In the mail-room
At Sachs;

Goldman Sachs

Where future CFO's,
Hedge-fund Gurus
And Climate-Change Deniers
Are spawned

Where Guardians of the status quo
And the chasm
Between coffee and cream
Gather, stir and scheme;

The Clansman's dream
Of a perfect latte

Just grow them beans,
Jimbo

Just be the black sheep
Of your destiny,
Jimbo

And shine these fother muckin shoes...

AYO

~P

.......
Jamesgpaulsr.com (bio/portfolio)
Facebook.com/poetrybyPablo (poetry/digital art)

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