What it is to be Poor in the United States of America
We are not a desolate people, the poor in the United States. We have things, I a television, a computer, a real roof over my head. There are those who don’t have that, a roof that they call, “mine.” I am lucky.
We live from day to day. Not really that. Mostly, for me, cash payment to cash payment. I can’t dream to pay bills. I have a benefactor. I am lucky.
I know the real shit. I really have been there, enough to write about it. A lot of the time it’s real pain. Moments brought hard using violence. Most of the time it’s what it’s always been, alienation. The streets are for those who don’t belong.
We’re your best, motherfuckers. We’re the ones who see the desolate in the gleaming country, America. People write about that, not success. Maybe success, like “Wall Street”, a great tumor on society. Success is not glorified. Name a film that does.
The poor live seeing those above in some other light, not made of them; true sweat. The poor don’t life is the world you do. We cannot fathom a world where the grocery budget can be cut. A vacation is to the families’ house, and that costs money. Europe doesn’t exist.
We strain. There is no better way to put it. We strain to pay the rent. The rent is everything. We pay the rent. We pay our lords.
We pay our bills, those that we can. To keep the lights on is a chore. We serve our chore. The lights are on. But what else?
It is great that the world has made so many toys. My nephew, a child of great potential, has every toy to make him a great man. We, those that are grown, have a chicken, a chicken cooked in a drunken state and eaten; and now we don’t really eat. But the child is cared for.
There is not a giant favor I ask of society. It is just this: A man must eat. A man must eat and nourish and thrive, given basic food. We have that plan, SNAP, Food Stamps, but there is life beyond that. The food of life is interest. The United States can nourish the poor, they do a great job of it, but what is this life but some fucking joy? Keep us alive, I suppose, to alleviate guilt.
No!
We can become something. The greatest talent I’ve seen is on the streets.
Food without shelter is vacant.
The way to equality is within us.
There is no way we will claim it.
And yet it is here. If the United States wanted a more just world, it would be ours. The final truth, if we look into our hearts, is that we don’t really want equality.
We want what is ours. That is not equality.
Jesus of Nazareth was pretty clear on one of many points, he hated hypocrisy. America, however Christian you feel yourself to be, the vast majority is not. Jesus said something else. Whatever interpretation you see in the Gospel, Jesus was pretty clear. It is hard to get into heaven if you are rich. It is hard, at a minimum, if not impossible, to get into heaven if you are rich.
So please, Christian American, choose a path. Capitalism is diametrically opposed to Christianity. If you dig within yourself, you will see it to be true.
I ask you to own up.