Crunching Pride

Just writing up my list
and crunching the numbers
that mama says
won’t change for the next
twenty years,
so get comfortable.
She might as well have said:
“You’ll always be poor, sweetheart,
and we all know
there ain’t no charm in it.”

Bread winner training
for a job
his own sick brain
won’t let him have.
Because sick brains
are a liability,
and school
is just too hard.
“You’ll always be poor, sweetheart,
I’m sorry there ain’t,
no getting use to it.”

Just throw money at me,
I’m a black hole,
and even once all the debt
is paid,
it will just come back
because my poor
is a combination
of bad habit
and bad choices
that can’t be redone.

“You’ll always be poor,
and it’s your fault.”

At least I don’t burn it
with poisons and caffine
and smoke to lift me up.
I spend it on something worse:
food.
And there’s no kicking
that habit.

“You’ll always be poor,
so stay down.”

Let me break my fists upon you,
but no, that’s expected.
To act the part isn’t the same
as BEING the part.
Oh the unsettled bottom class.
But when no one sees or hears
I’m screaming
at something I thought
I could control.

“You’ll always be poor.”

I’d be happy
with middle class.
I don’t want a mansion.
But I’d like a place
that’s my own,
and not my father’s,
my mother’s,
or my grandmother’s,
and food from a hand
that’s mine.

I can’t be some charity case!

“Worthless.”

There’s no room for pride.
Swallow your pill whole
like the flailing child you are.
Slave away at wherever
you are ALLOWED to work.
College degree? What’s that?
Done everything right? Don’t care.

Because you’ll always be poor.

…well screw that.