first day of spring

it is not raining tonight

it did not rain today

 

but the threat of el niño lingers

 

i’ve walked out of a midnight movie

two and half hours of metropolis restored

fritz lang

 

a message unrivaled till

v for vendetta

 

dramatic portrayals of a war

the working man has already lost

 

earlier i had onion rings

with a pitcher of beer

 

and talked to a man who told me

that though he worked full time

he qualified for medicaid

and food stamps

 

his company was letting the government

provide for his family

while they took all the profits of his labor

 

his company had even let the employees

put out a donation jar

with a sign for customers to read

please contribute so we can buy

thanksgiving dinner for our families

 

not even feeling they had to hide the fact

that they did not pay their workers enough

to afford a holiday meal

 

the homeless i come across

always tell me

“ain’t always been this way

but the worker is just a paycheck away

from tent city

and the cops that bulldoze us down”

 

 a decent wage

is all the rage

everywhere but in your corporate boardrooms

where profit margins and diminished returns

fill the conversations furnished by lattes

 

“do you know how much money we could make

if we didn’t have to pay the people who make us all this money”

 

i twist the top off my flask

touch it to my lips

 

somewhere a single electron does the dose doe

around a single proton

 

and tomorrow a boss will write up an employee

for not caring enough about his job

 

“after a year we offer a profit sharing plan

but it looks like you may not make it that long

if your attitude doesn’t improve”

 

and these are just 3 a.m. ramblings

i will not lead the revolution

because none of us can agree on what we deserve

before we have even earned

 

but the corporate think tank

doesn’t even think about the worker

just the burden payroll puts on profits

 

conversation and a good movie

and my thoughts have strayed

to other than the destiny of our decay

and is making me use words like social injustice

 

but like i said they won

and we can do nothing but play by their rules

it is the only game in town

 

and frustrated words in the break room

are the only sounds of the disenfranchised

who only want to be appreciated by the company

they helped earn a 130 billion last year

 

but don’t even get free tissues for their tears

oh fuck it

my flask is empty

and my feet on this concrete

will not change a thing

 

i crush my empty pack

as i light my last cigarette

and watch a street light flicker

and then extinguish

 

no more light is being shed on my anger

greed is the vile seed that is planted

on the backs of the worker

who has nothing for his hard work

but fear of what they are going to do to us next

and fear that we won’t get to eat the crumbs

crusting on the floor of corporate carpets

before they are vacuumed up by outsourced labor

 

***