Color me refuse
Mud in the underbelly
The loose form of a man shoveling **** with a plan to tunnel out and hand the sentence to my master
Lose the chain around my neck and find a plot of land to dance tomorrow

It’s so far away though

Will I tread the sea of bodies strung along the ground
between the sphinxes gate to claim the crown, that even now glimmers past the smog that attempts to fog my vision my decision to walk on tested with every sound.

Bury my pride and carry the burden in stride refuse to tarry or cower or decide to turn around
Push the pen to the page with bleeding fingers
Paint with all the colors of masterpiece until I force something out

Will I?

Or will the tar on my lungs erase me
Will I be wrung like a towel thrown in
Drunk on futility
Chasing with impotent rage
Caged in a circus of ****** on a stage cuz I can’t raise a kid on minimum wage

Furious clouds are born storming throughout luxurious tapestries torn by ******* apathy ask me if My potential still holds sway when my energy has me using my hands to stop the rain.
Torrents pour in to clear my storage of scraps and sheer force of denial implores the whip on my back to pretend it’s on my side while it slips in a crack and adores the dough made from my heart attack

Bedazzled prizes consume the whipping allies beside me
inventing new ways to cope with bottom feeding society
assuming truth’ll be derived if so behooved are the masters and their plastic constituents which I guess makes sense, but
poor judgement lends my flesh up to communion if I dare to walk in and say union.


The reagents and *** kissers call into question mindsets infected by a weakness of character
I shed my pride and inquire with an open hand the law layers of the land to relinquish a sparing of its crumbs
Spun from a singular purpose of a daughters meal the judges glaring does little to impair my will to take the help I can
and spare the child the repercussions of her fathers failure and prepare a better plan

Further choral echoing discord turns it ugly head upon the scraps in my hand and posits that if they were taken it would make me work a lot harder instead of coasting on crumbs

So when the coal baron collects his second billionth he will surely cease pursuing correct?
Not do his best to dissect
Every millisecond of labor dug from workers he’s abusing to wring another penny out.
in fact
I think I see your point
Poised to join and help detract
Back peddle over to
Destroying. Prove lying
On your belly is the easy way out. To say
Today’s coin was well deserved. And serve stout drinks to the kings sleep on a rock and talk **** to the guy sleeping in a box because I’ve been taught to think I deserve where I am regardless of my environment but c'mon man ****

Let’s play a game of monopoly
I’ll start with 80% of the bank and y’all can be my ******* when I pay to write the rules and spank you up and down the board while barely touching the capital I have stored.

I’m getting pretty ****** tired of the stale story hard wired in our heads where the moral is free market prevailing for the pauper til he’s dead and social safety nets provided to the prince instead

it’s lead us to question
Methods of distribution sympathetic to tribulations
Endured.
Solutions ignored
For the poor because a single mother with a phone
Doesn’t deserve to be thrown a ******* bone
Apparently

All hail the welfare queen
Who hasn’t seen a day without the banks banner bearers walking tall
All over legislated brick walls enveloping more then all of her vision of a road to prosperity

Make it clear to me how she’s quote "taking advantage" of the land of the free while I see that you fail to ask us
How behind a mask of nobility a trillion dollar company still doesn’t pay its ******* taxes.

Advertise my soul,
capitalise from my sins.
Dig the earth for coal,
a market built for kings.
Suppress for your control,
fill your life with things.
Abolition of self-control,
a life attached to strings.

I just don't know how people do it.
Wake up and work for a living
just to pay hospital, insurance,
utility, student bills
like there's nothing to it,
and then go to bed
with no scary thoughts beating
like cold rain through their heads.
Every day is a struggle between
either myself and the world or
myself and time or
myself and myself,
and it takes every drop of will
that I have to not reach for
the bottle, the pipe, on the shelf.
I just don't know how people,
some people, most people, it seems,
can live any better than that.
Like the one percent sitting
on top of the world looking
down, hysterically laughing
at those who have to work,
who breaks their
backs and necks and minds
trying to make something last
longer than a few ******* days.
Sure, there's beauty in the world,
but you gotta pay to look at it.
And even then, you aren't allowed
to just grab it and take it,
put a sign on it and make it yours.
Someone's already claimed
all you hold dear.
You're just stuck borrowing.

Alienate my body and mind,
commodify my core;
Is my existence
a means to a profit?
The 21st century's commercial *****.

My labor is not mine,
my art is not mine;
Everything I create
liscensed and taken,
another addition to a capitalist's shrine.

I understand the poached animal:
Ripped apart,
skin and teeth hung for all to see,
and then, admired for its beauty.

Is it relative
to the struggle
to live
that worked
its way
from all
the epic yesterdays,
each generation
passing dna,
each saga
set in stone
by the sages
who remember?

Is it based
on the formula
of hourly wages
times the time
we put in
constantly working
as a cog in
the machine?

Is it
a product
of relationships
from familial
to all of our
friendships?

Is it
measured
by potential
future achievements?

Or are we just
pounds of flesh
easily discarded,
meat for the factory
cannon fodder,
children to the slaughter?

I wonder,
what is the value of life?

What say you?
Man in a business suit
Standing to my left
In the middle of a crosswalk
Do you have a moment to talk?
Orange hands and little green men
And we go on our way
       Okay
         We’ll chat another day

What say you?
Man in a business suit
Standing to my right
On Martin Luther and Lime
You haven’t worried about money in a while.
But where is your smile?
Do you know your child?
      Please
        Spare a moment of your time

What say you?
Men in business suits
Walking fast on the street
Somewhere important to be
Do rats sometimes think racing is fun?
I never thought about that
When I said I was done
              Maybe
               I am one of the lucky ones

blind bliss
the empty contour of yesterday
turns on itself

jets to oblivion
paper streams celebrate
the century’s end

thus piled
at the foot of the terminal
a mound of teeth

and convalescence in search of illness.

“There’s always a sucker in the till. . .and an investor in the mill.”