More on Poverty
I have the right to not only do as I please, given the constraints of public law, but to do as I don’t please. To not-do. To resist.
This is how “freedom” diverges from “liberty.” This is one of the promises that American made to it’s people. The right to do or not-do as they please. But we not-doers are lost, being forced to do, have been for the life of the country. We are the desolate.
We’re poor, for sure. But we stand not as a stereotype of them. We are the homeless. We are the 20 hours a week just to make it at the Motel 6. We’re the ones who just gave up.
The people who’re poor despite working, seriously, fuck you for not letting them get ahead. That’s fucking slavery, you corporate pricks. Set minimum wage at a level the rich fucks can afford, but barely, and at a place where the poor can, not only get along, but invest, like the people in a capitalist society are supposed to be able to do. Only when they can magically turn money into more money will Capitalism be just.
My concern, though, is about the desolate. Those lost from society. As a member, I obviously have a vested interest in this topic. But the truth is, I want the best for my people. The most moral people I have ever met were on the streets. The best laid hopes and dreams, more often than not, fell flat in abject poverty. People on that side are cool, on a path without excess. If the shit ever really hit the fan, meteors or whatnot, I’d totally want the poor on my side.
But in the day to day, the poor are seriously fucked. There is a disconnect between everyone else and us. Those that work, I don’t know about those. I’ve known them. They make it. They get by. But getting by just ain’t life. Rich fucks don’t get it. Getting by is desolate Getting by is vacant Is America here to just get by, or give every one of it’s citizens a real opportunity to make it big.
To the vacant, from the perspective I speak,. you all got it real easy. The social energy put forth to ignore us is your only chore. No one has cared about us since Lyndon Johnson. We are perpetually in your peripheral vision. And you say you want to care. No homeless service program I’ve seen has cared enough to get me on my feet. I understand that there are such things, but I am a white male from a middle-class family who has no mental illness severe enough to warrant disability status with no fucking hope. I’m supposed to be gifted in this society, but poverty affects us all, in every corner, to some extent. I feel for people who are darker than the European initial emigrants, I think we all in this together, but white folk suffer to.
I’ve suffered too long. The poor have suffered too long. We need to be included, just a little, or you’re killing us. You, the people who ignore us, are killing us. This in no over dramatization. We can only afford sugar. This kills us. We live around guns. Those’ll kill us. We smoke cigarettes a lot, more that the more-wealthy. They are known to kill us. We suffer police brutality, especially our black friends. Sometimes even that kills us. We don’t vote, so the politicians might as well kill us. We don’t have a say. Why don’t you kill us?
I’m gone. I don’t know about the rest of us. I can’t speak for people I meet out there who don’t have a place to sleep the night. They are so many times more eligible for suicidal thoughts than I, but I can only speak for myself. I have food in my gut. I have a warm place to sleep. I have only this. But there are brothers and sisters out there with none of that. On 12-12-15. It’s unseasonably warm here. It ain’t unseasonable everywhere.
I will never have a 9-5. I can’t be awake during that time. I’ve tried and tried, maybe 5 times total, but it doesn’t work. I’ve held a job, later in the evening, but I can’t get ahead from there. I asked to be given a chance to move ahead, but they said the company wasn’t expanding. I left for better pastures, but found more phone work. I got tired of that, tried making my art make money, but I had no clue how to make that work. I went back to college, but they only told me what I already know. I am there, now, one semester left, with no potential concept of where to go now. This society has told me, over and over, we don’t want someone who is occasionally 15 minutes late. If I am always sometimes going to be 15 minutes late, doesn’t that mean I will always fail? BA or whatnot, aren’t they always going to tell me I can’t succeed?
I WILL NOT SELL OUT. THEY WILL NEVER PAY ME, so I have failed, BUT I WILL REMAIN ME.